Prospects for post COVID-19 recovery are dangerously diverging, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) The United Nations said developing nations have spent 580 times less per capita on their COVID-19 response, in comparison to richer nations, because they do not have the money to do so. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By Nalisha Adams
BONN, Germany, Mar 30 2021 (IPS)

The inability of developing nations to spend on post COVID-19 recovery and resilience has placed the world on the “the verge of a debt crisis”. “We face the spectre of a divided world and a lost decade for development,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said on Monday, Mar. 29, during a high-level meeting on financing development post COVID-19.

He said that developing nations needed access to liquidity to allow them to sufficiently respond to the pandemic and invest in recovery and urged the global community to provide this necessary support.

Guterres highlighted the over 2.7 million COVID-19-related deaths and the over 128 million people who fell into extreme poverty over the last year.

He noted that while the world’s rich nations have benefited from an unprecedented $18 trillion of emergency support measures, setting the stage for economic recovery post COVID-19, many developing nations could not invest in recovery and resilience. In fact many have spent 580 times less per capita on their COVID-19 response, in comparison to richer nations, because they do not have the money to do so.

One third of emerging market economies where at high risk for fiscal crisis while six countries had already defaulted on loan payments. Guterres said the situation was even worse for least-developed and low-income countries.

“They face a painfully slow recovery that will put the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement completely out of reach,” Guterres warned.

The meeting titled “International Debt Architecture and Liquidity – Financing for Development in the Era of COVID-19 and Beyond Initiative” was convened jointly by Guterres, Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“We are at a turning point in the COVID-19 crisis,” Guterres said.

He said the stark reality of lack of funding among developing nations was clearly evident in the access to COVID-19 vaccines.

“Many developed countries are on the brink of mass vaccination drives. In developing countries this could take months, if not years, further delaying a global recovery,” Guterres said.

Jamaican Prime Minister Holness said that while vaccine rollouts where gathering pace, “an uneven and inequitable vaccination programme will lead to an uneven global recovery and sadly a re-inforcement of poverty”.

“Unless we are prepared to enter deeper cooperation with fairer, smarter, and broader views of our world and common interests, we should temper our expectations that the crisis is nearing its end,”  Holness said.

While Guterres welcomed that steps that had been taken to date by international financial institutions, noting the G20s debt services suspension initiative and the common framework for debt treatments, he said this was still “far from enough”.

He also pointed out that the common framework for debt treatments was facing difficulties as countries were reluctant to use debt recovery mechanisms as they were concerned this would have a negative impact on their credit ratings.

He said there was an opportunity to address weaknesses in current debt architecture. 

“Ultimately we need a shift in mindsets to responsible borrowing and lending.”

Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said because of the closure of export opportunities and lowering commodity prices, COVID-19 has worsened debt dynamics for many developing countries.

“The collapse of export receipts from tourism has prompted balance of payment difficulties for many developing countries, especially island economies from the Caribbean to the Pacific to the India Ocean,” Okonjo-Iweala said.

She noted that the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, trade finance dried up for ‘several’ low-income nations as foreign banks cut existing credit lines or refused to endorse letters of credit unless guaranteed by others.

“Without trade finance countries cannot import the basic necessities, they can only do it by paying cash in advance,” she said, adding that action on trade can help alleviate debt pressures.

“Lowering trade barriers gives countries more opportunities to push down their debt to export ratios. Addressing supply side constraints and improving access to trade finance would help them take better advantage of market opportunities,”  Okonjo-Iweala said.

She said that by delivering results at the WTO, including at the organisation’s 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12), which will take place in November, “governments can reinforce the predictable framework of rules that underpin global trade and enhance the ability of countries to earn their foreign exchange they need”.

“Lost decades are a policy choice. We can and we must do better,” Okonjo-Iweala said.

Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), admitted that while the global economic outlook was improving thanks to efforts on vaccines and unprecedented actions by governments and the international community “prospects for recovery are dangerously diverging”. 

“What we can now report is that relative to pre-crisis projections, and excluding China, this group [of developing nations] is projected by 2022 to have cumulative per capita income losses as high as 20 percent,” Georgieva said, noting this would be a one-fifth loss of what was already a lower income to begin with.

The per capital income loss in advanced economies would be 11 percent, she said.

“We need a comprehensive approach to support vulnerable countries and people. And it must include measures at home to improve revenue collection, spending efficiency … as well as very substantial international support, [such as] grants and concessional lending,” Georgieva said.

She said the IMF would do its part through concessional financing. She also noted that the new special drawing rights (SDRs) or supplementary foreign exchange reserve assets defined and maintained by the IMF, of $650 billion, which was endorsed by the G7 earlier this month to address the long term needs for formal assets. She said she submit a proposal in June to provide more transparency into lending.

“A new SDR allocation would support the global recovery, provide substantial direct liquidity boosts to all IMF members, without adding to debt burdens, and freeing up resources for countries under pressure to do what is right and take care of their people and their businesses,”  Georgieva said.

She said in parallel the IMF was exploring options for members with strong financial positions to reallocate SDRs to support vulnerable countries.

She added that action on debt was an integral part of the comprehensive response to COVID-19 recovery.

President of the World Bank Group David Malpass said the world faced devastating challenges, especially for the poorest countries.

“For countries with unsustainable debt we are looking for solutions that meet both the near-term liquidity challenges and the longer-term sustainability challenges,” Malpass said, explaining that solutions for both time frames was critical in helping people get access to resources for health, education and climate.

He said along with the IMF, the World Bank was supporting the G20s debt services suspension initiative that saw 40 countries benefit from $6 billion in debt services suspension last year. He added that the 6-month extension of debt services suspension initiative to June 2021 could provide an additional $7 billion of temporary relief for countries.

President of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Akinwumi A. Adesina said the COVID-19 pandemic “has devastated Africa’s accounts” in a year that saw 106,000 deaths related to the virus and GDP decline of between $145 to 190 billion.

Despite the current situation, Adesina said that the AfDB projects that the Africa’s read GDP growth would recover from -2.1 percent GDP growth in 2020 to 3.4 percent for 2021. He added, however, that this growth was conditional on equitable access to vaccines and on resolving Africa’s debt distress. He said the structure of Africa’s debt had changed dramatically and its total external debt stands at $700 billion.

“We need global solidarity on vaccine access for Africa. We also need global solidarity on debt for Africa,” Adesina said.

He called for the extension of the G20 debt services suspension initiative and for it to also include vulnerable and middle income countries.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

A landmark United Nations report is calling on governments to declare remittance transfer an essential service. Photo by Christine Roy on Unsplash

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 9 2020 (IPS)

On Dec. 2 Gabriel Arias, 42, left a Washington Heights, New York, money transfer agency after sending money home to the Dominican Republic. For the past eight years, every fortnight he would come to this branch at 171st street after getting paid from his construction job. But things are different this year and he worries about his family back home. Arias lost his job in May, amid heightened COVID-19 restrictions in the state. He told IPS he has tried to work some odd jobs, but has barely earned enough for his monthly apartment rental. This early December visit to send money home was only his second since June.

“It has been hard because for a long time this year, I had no work. I came here speaking no English. I worked hard. Learned to speak and I took care of my mother and the family in the Dominican Republic. I had no job, no work since the COVID,” he told IPS.

Arias is not alone. A landmark United Nations report is calling on governments to declare remittance transfer an essential service and ensure access to humanitarian assistance, legal services and social protection for migrants and the displaced, as COVID-19 shifts the dynamics of global migration and hunger.

The report entitled “Populations at Risk: Implications of COVID-19 for Hunger, Migration and Displacement” is the first joint global report by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and World Food Programme (WFP) and analyses food security trends in the world’s migration hotspots during the pandemic. It warns that COVID-19 and measures taken to contain its spread have disrupted human mobility patterns, the consequences of which could been seen for years to come.

Earlier this year, countries across the globe instituted various tiers of entry requirements. According to the report, while those restrictions resulted in significantly reduced international migration in the first months of the pandemic, the ensuing dip in unemployment and food security led to a desperate need to search for work elsewhere – and a spike in migration due to necessity.

One of the areas hardest hit by the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns involves remittances. Globally, migrant remittances are a financial lifeline for around 800 million people. World Bank figures put remittances to low and middle-income countries (LMICS) at over $550 billion in 2019. For more than half of these countries, funds sent by migrant workers to their relatives in their home countries account for over 5 percent of gross domestic product. However, remittance flows have plunged drastically in 2020 and according to the report, over 33 million people are at risk of going hungry as part of the socio-economic impact of COVID-19.

“If efforts are made to channel remittances properly and ensure as well that you reduce the financial costs, this would have a greater impact on development. The idea is also that good management of the remittance services can help to speed up the recovery from the crisis,” IOM Senior Emergency and Preparedness Officer Rafaelle Robelin told IPS. 

With remittances to LMICS expected to fall by about $100 billion in 2020 and 495 million full time job losses in the first quarter of the year, the report’s partners say it is possible that many migrants are sacrificing their own consumption and other needs, in order to send money to loved ones in their home countries. The report states that this is not a sustainable means of supporting families in the medium to long-term. It is also bad news for countries heavily dependent on remittances. 

“Coupled with the 32 percent drop projected for foreign direct investments (FDI) in 2020, contractions in the prices of natural resources and a significant decrease in tourism revenues, the drop in remittances will likely impact the financial stability of numerous countries….poverty, food security, nutrition, health and educational attainment are all being directly impacted by mobility restrictions and the decline in remittances,” the report said.

While it confirms the importance of migrant work and its contribution to the economies of home countries, the report also highlights the inherent vulnerabilities that migrant workers face and notes that the pandemic has exacerbated those risks.

“It has been very clear since the onset of the crisis, that the impact of COVID on migration and mobility would be huge,” said Robelin, adding that, “migration has a positive impact from the remittance angle. The fact that many people lost their jobs who migrated for development means, means that in the long term, those benefitting from the positive impact of migration, may suffer.”

The IOM official says restriction of movement may have also pushed people to move under dangerous circumstances. Mobile and displaced populations also face new challenges such as increased exposure to work-related abuse and exploitation, the risk of losing residence status, the lack of funds to buy hygiene items and difficulties accessing COVID-19 tests, as well as restrictions on their general freedom to travel back and forth to their country of origin.

The IOM and WFP predict that partial or full lifting of travel regulations will result in more people leaving home to find work in order to feed their families. They are calling for well-governed migration to be a cornerstone of the global response to COVID-19. They believe that making remittance transfer an essential financial service can help families to meet their food and other needs. They are also advising the global community to ensure migrant access to health services including immunisation and mental health support. The partners are also recommending that government recognise the significant role played by migrants by ensuring they have access to social protection initiatives.

Some governments have implemented COVID-19 relief packages. They vary across countries and regions. IPS spoke to a family in Brooklyn, New York, who has opted to send home barrels of groceries, household and hygiene products to their loved ones in Saint Lucia. Lawmakers on the Caribbean island went to parliament in June and amended a bill that provides for late November to early January duty free concessions on barrels of items for household use. They announced that those tax relief measures would now extend from June 2020 to January 2021, in order to assist the most vulnerable and the thousands of Saint Lucians who lost their jobs.

“We took advantage of the duty-free and were able to send food home. We sent cleaning products and items like hand sanitisers, thermometers, masks and months of supplies that are expensive or not available back home,” one family told IPS.

Recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to be much slower than the 2009 global financial crisis. The report’s joint analysis has concluded that an effective response and recovery plan must take into consideration the link between food security and migration.

Excerpt:

Scenes from a rehearsal session with Colombia’s Cantadora Network, a network of singers using traditional Afro-Colombian music to preserve their culture and promote peace. According to the Global Network of Women Peacebuilder, funds are being diverted from women-led peacebuilding organisations, and from peacebuilding processes more broadly. Credit: UN Women/Ryan Brown

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 30 2020 (IPS)

Women need to be given roles as negotiators, not just offered representation through advisory groups, Agnieszka Fal-Dutra Santos from the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP) told IPS.

Santos spoke with IPS after the Wednesday, Oct. 28 webinar “Beyond the Pandemic: Opening the Doors to Women’s Meaningful Participation”. At the conference,  policymakers and analysts spoke about ways to ensure that women have more leadership roles in society.

Agnieszka Fal-Dutra Santos from the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP). Courtesy: GNWP

Santos was responding specifically to comments by Kavya Asoka, executive director of  the NGO Working Group (NGOWG) on Women, Peace and Security, who said that women should not be allotted to “any participation” but “meaningful participation” in peacemaking decisions. 

Yifat Susskind, executive director of Madre, a women’s rights organisation, told IPS, “women have been holding leadership positions at the grassroots level for a long time, and we need to see more women in influential positions in policymaking”.

During the webinar, Jeanine Antoinette Plasschaert, special representative of the secretary-general for Iraq and head of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, highlighted the importance of taking into account the social, economic, political and historical contexts when engaging women in leadership roles.

The current coronavirus pandemic adds to the challenges.

“Our partners report that funds are being diverted from women-led peacebuilding organisations, and from peacebuilding processes more broadly,” Santos told IPS. “For example, in Colombia, women peacebuilders report that COVID-19 has served as an excuse to divert funds away from the transitional justice mechanisms.”

She added that another  challenge is also the digital divide, which affects women disproportionately. This is exacerbated by the fact that not all peacebuilding work can be performed over the Internet – such as reconciliation work, dialogues between conflicting communities and support to trauma survivors – which can’t be easily moved to the virtual space owing to their “delicate and sensitive nature”.

“At the same time, the pandemic has also shown the incredible resilience of women peacebuilders and women’s movements,” she said. “Despite the digital barrier, women have continued to organise, and find innovative ways to use the internet and other communication means to continue their work.”

Excerpts of the interviews with Susskind and Santos follow:

Yifat Susskind, executive director of Madre. Courtesy: Madre

IPS: What entails meaningful participation of women in the peacebuilding processes?

Yifat Susskind (YS): Women must have more than a seat at the table in formal peace negotiations. They must also have the power and influence to set the agenda, ensuring that gender impacts are addressed as a priority and bringing community demands to the forefront. Crucially, this access must be available to grassroots women peacebuilders rooted in frontline communities, who have a deep well of knowledge about war’s impacts at home, who can help build community trust in the peace process, and who can ensure that any resulting peace agreement is implemented at the ground level.

Agnieszka Fal-Dutra Santos (AFS): The most common understanding of “meaningful participation” is that it’s the kind of participation that allows women to actually impact the outcomes of peace negotiations and other processes.

It also means participation of diverse women, and participation of women at all levels. Women need to be included in decision-making bodies and peacebuilding processes at the local, national, regional and international levels. Further, when we talk about women’s participation we have to think of women from all walks of life – refugee and internally displaced women, indigenous and ethnic minority women, young women, women with disabilities, lesbian, bi-sexual and trans women, etc.

IPS: Madre focuses especially on climate change and how rural women are most affected by this. How have they been affected during the coronavirus pandemic?

YS: Rural women worldwide on the frontlines of climate change are forced to confront daily its worst impacts, typically carrying the heaviest burden as those responsible for providing families with food, water, and household fuel. The coronavirus pandemic has only deepened this burden of care work on women and girls.

Lockdowns have shut down markets, limiting the availability of food and making it impossible for many rural women to sell livestock, crops, and wares. The lack of income, combined with the spike in food prices and the continued effects of the climate crisis, has made food scarce for many families.

IPS: GNWP involves women from countries around the world. How do you address the diverse set of challenges they face from different parts of the world?

AFS: A key aspect of our work is to elevate the voices, recommendations and practical solutions of women peacebuilders to global policy spaces. We do this through research, as well as by creating spaces and opportunities for women peacebuilders to share their perspectives and recommendations directly with global policy makers.

But equally, if not more, important is the other aspect of our work – global to local. Localisation of Women, Peace and Security is one of flagship programmes of GNWP. It brings together local women, youth and representatives of other historically marginalised groups, as well as religious and traditional leaders and local authorities — mayors, governors, councillors, etc. Together, they analyse their local context and the relevance of the global resolutions and national policies on WPS to it. They identify concrete measures to translate these global and national laws into tangible actions and impacts on the ground.

Localisation also leads to institutionalisation of the commitments to WPS, and to harmonisation of the existing laws and policies on gender equality, women’s rights and peace and security. We have seen it yield concrete impacts and results across the world – for example, inclusion of women in traditional conflict resolution councils in the Philippines, increased SGBV reporting in Uganda, etc.

IPS: What are some ways to ensure women are given leadership roles in addressing the pandemic?

YS: We must first recognise that at the community level, women are already vital leaders in pandemic response: caring for people who become sick, ensuring food for their families, organising their communities and more. Many are trusted, longtime activists who understand deeply and specifically the needs of their communities and who are known locally as reliable sources of support and information. We must ensure that these women — including those in hard-hit places like refugee camps and climate disaster zones — have the space to offer their expertise to shape policy responses.

What’s more, since long before the pandemic, grassroots feminists worldwide have grappled with the need to meet urgent needs while simultaneously working towards long-term, systemic solutions. Learning from these approaches, policymakers can implement emergency relief efforts, whether distributing food or providing health information, while setting the stage for long-term recovery. This means continually reasserting the need for a shift in the values driving our policies, amplifying feminist approaches of collective work and community care.

AFS: Women are already leading the responses to COVID-19. From mobilising and organising humanitarian responses in their communities, to drafting Feminist Recovery Plans (for example in Northern Ireland), to monitoring the ceasefires and the implementation of peace agreements.

What is sorely lacking is their inclusion in decision-making about the pandemic recovery. We spoke to women peacebuilders and civil society across the world, and we have consistently seen that women are being excluded from COVID-19 Task Forces and planning committees. Globally women make up less than a quarter of such committees (according to CARE). One way to ensure that women are given leadership roles is to guarantee that all COVID-19 Task Forces and Committees include at least 50 percent  of women. This must include women from the civil society, who are at the forefront of COVID-19 response; and women in all their diversity.

Forest cover on the east of Saint Lucia. Forests and trees play a significant role in poverty alleviation and ultimately, eradication. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
NEW YORK, United States, Oct 15 2020 (IPS)

With extreme poverty (living on $1.90 a day) projected to rise for the first time in over 20 years, a new study has concluded that global poverty eradication efforts could be futile in the absence of forests and trees.

Twenty-one scientists and over 40 contributing authors spent the last two years studying the role of forests and trees in poverty alleviation and ultimately, eradication.  The Global Forest Expert Panel issued its findings on Oct. 15, in a report titled, “Forests, Trees and the Eradication of Poverty: Potential and Limitations”.

The report comes amid two global challenges that are disproportionately impacting the poor and vulnerable – the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. According to the United Nations, 71 million people are expected to be pushed back into extreme poverty in 2020, a major threat to Sustainable Development Goal 1, ending poverty in all its forms, everywhere.

Lead researcher and chair of the International Union of Forest Research Organisations Professor Daniel C. Miller told IPS that while forests and trees can help the severe losses at the intersection of climate change, zoonotic disease outbreaks and poverty alleviation, they continue to be overlooked in mainstream policy discourse.

“A quarter of the world’s population lives in or near a forest and trees actively contribute to human well-being, particularly the most vulnerable among us. This research hopes to bring to light the available scientific evidence on how forests have contributed to poverty alleviation and translate it in a way that is accessible to policy makers,” he said.

Globally forests are a vital source of food, fuel and ecotourism services. They also help to conserve water and soil resources and boast climate change mitigating properties such as carbon sequestration, the process of absorbing and storing carbon.

The report states that the rural poor need forests for subsistence and income generation, but in one of its chief findings, reported that inequality in the distribution of forest benefits continues to hurt the vulnerable. 

“To illustrate, in large scale logging on indigenous lands or where marginalised people live, timber is the most valuable forest product, yet that value is often not accrued to the people who have to deal with the aftermath of not having forests anymore,” said Miller.

The researchers are hoping that the report can help to inform policy on issues such as equitable and sustainable forest use and conservation. Along with their findings, they have prepared a policy brief for lawmakers. That document takes a multi-dimensional look at poverty, assessing both the monetary value of forests and tree resources and their impact on human well-being, health and safety.

For two small islands in the Eastern Caribbean, the report’s findings complement ongoing sustainable forestry for poverty alleviation programs. In 2o16, Saint Lucia, which boasts 25,000 acres of forest or 38 percent of its land area, launched a 10-year forest protection plan. The country’s most senior forester Alwin Dornelly told IPS that this document was ahead of its time, as Saint Lucia’s is well in keeping with some of the report’s major recommendations.

“We simply cannot do without our forests. 85 percent of our country’s water sources are in the forests. Our fresh water supply depends on the trees. The plan underscores forest protection for lives and livelihoods; from charcoal for fire and timber for furniture to agricultural produce for household use and for sale by residents of rural communities. Sustainable use of forest resources is a hallmark of this plan,” he said.

The forestry department monitors the country’ eco-trails, popular with nature tourists who take part in camping, hiking and bird watching, activities that create employment for nearby residents and based on the sustainable forest livelihoods component of the 10-year plan. According to the global report ecotourism activities are among the practices that may lead to greater equity in forest benefits.

The report is also a morale booster for forestry officials on the island of Dominica, who are celebrating reforestation gains. Known for its lush, green vegetation, forests carpet 60 percent of the island and its Morne Trois Piton National Park is a U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation World Heritage Site. It has taken just over three years, but the country has recovered the almost one-third of forest coverage destroyed by Hurricane Maria in 2017.

“Dominicans have the right to reap the benefits of sustainable forest resources. We suffered 90 percent defoliage after the 2017 hurricane and 33 percent forest destruction. We are thankful for both natural regeneration and our national tree planting initiative. We have eight community plant nurseries and propagation centres for sustained reforestation – nurseries we hope turn handover for community ownership. We understand that forest loss is livelihood loss, especially for those in rural areas,” the country’s forestry chief Michinton Burton told IPS.

The English-speaking Caribbean is not wildly cited in the study, something Miller says falls under its ‘limitations’ segment, adding that more research is needed on smaller islands. The forest experts who spoke to IPS, however, say the report’s warnings, calls to action and findings are instructive for policy makers globally.

The researchers have made it clear that forests and trees are not a cure-all for poverty but are essential to the overall solution. With health experts predicting future pandemics due to ecological degradation and climate scientists warning that the Caribbean will experience more intense hurricanes like Maria, the report states that these challenging times call for a rethink of current poverty eradication measures. It adds that the ability of forests and trees to positively impact lives, health and livelihoods must be a central part of discussions to lift people out of poverty, particularly in rural settings.

The report was launched ahead of this year’s observance of International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, World Food Day and the International Day of Rural Women – three important days on the U.N. calendar that promote sustainable livelihoods, food security and poverty eradication.

Excerpt:

The COVID-19 pandemic saw 3.5 billion people without access to digital technology and services and more than one billion children unable to continue their education. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 14 2020 (IPS)

Digital technology has been crucial in ensuring community and connection during the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. And its shown that collaboration between the private and public sector can ensure that digital technology continues to advance in a way that improves people’s lives under crises, experts said on Tuesday, Oct. 13. 

The COVID-19 pandemic saw 3.5 billion people without access to digital services and more than one billion children unable to continue their education, Dr. Julia Glidden, corporate vice president at Microsoft Worldwide Public Sector, said at the webinar.

“As digital services became lifelines, empowering responders, [the] crisis also highlighted the need for greater connectivity,” she said.

Speakers from Denmark, South Korea, China and Bangladesh were among those who shared their insights at the webinar “Accelerating Digital Transformation for Sustainable and Resilient Recovery from COVID-19”. It was organised by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), Division for Public Institutions and Digital Government (DPIDG), and the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) of South Korea.

The webinar focused largely on the importance of bringing together public and private sector partnerships and highlighted the need for civic engagement.

Particularly outspoken on this issue was Kyong-yul Lee, Secretary-General of the World Smart Sustainable Cities Organisation (WeGO), an international association of cities, and local and national governments.

Echoing the thoughts of other speakers about the importance of collaboration of public and private institutions, Lee added the importance of including citizens in the equations.

“If civic participation is active, PPP (referring to public-private partnership) becomes PPPP —  public private people participation,” he said. “Citizens are not simple participants but active data collectors and problem solvers.”

In order to make sure these measures are effective, there is also the need for a change in mindset, Lee said.

“City officials should change their minds – they are not the owner of the city, and city administrators should be open minded and kept abreast of the times,” Lee added. “As it was the technology that changed the stone change, it’s technology that [will] usher in the smart age, so cities should awaken to it and invest in it for the future.” 

In some places, such as the digital technology landscape in Bangladesh, a change in mindset is already happening, according to Anir Chowdhury, policy advisor of the Aspire to Innovate (a2i) Programme under the ICT division in Bangladesh.

Chowdhury said amid the COVID-19 outbreak, officials in the government have adopted measures that are helping accelerate their work, with many “major decisions” taking place via Whatsapp.

This means they are able to hold high-level meetings on 12-16 hours notice.

“This has really given a radical change in mindset that leapfrogging is possible and we can eliminate a lot of steps in our bureaucracy,” Chowdhury said. “A lot of things that were thought to be impossible are now possible.”

Xufeng Zhu, Professor and Associate Dean at the School of Public Policy and Management in China’s Tsinghua University, discussed the digital technology measures the Chinese government used to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.

The Chinese government was able to use the internet for processes such as online diagnoses and the release of information , among other services. The latter was helpful in aiding government authorities to curb the spread of misinformation spread.

Digital technology was also crucial for delivery services during the lockdown, and the delivery system fixing the blind spots in the cities, Zhu said.

Tech companies also have a big role to play, he added.

It was noted that while the alliance between governments and tech companies is important to note, the citizens have a crucial role to play in ensuring that these measures are effective.

“Citizens must play a more active role and participate in helping create smart cities,” said Lee of WeGO. “Citizens should change their mind too, they shouldn’t be passive bystanders, they are real owners of the city and they are asked to actively create the ideal smart city. A sense of ownership is critical and civil participation makes a big difference.”

Glidden offered a call to action.

“In the face of unprecedented global challenges, there’s also opportunities,” Glidden said. “I believe the need to catalyse collaborative partnerships and innovation of a global level has never been greater.”

She said a model that involves a vibrant mix of small and mid-size enterprises, and the public and private sector would be the ideal model to addresses “challenges of access and inclusion, which COVID-19 so dramatically showcased”.

She called for a model that “ultimately shows digital is a force for social good rather than disruption and division”.

Ahead of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned against the rapid rise in misinformation campaigns about vaccines, leading to “vaccine hesitancy and igniting wild conspiracy theories”. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 17 2020 (IPS)

Key focuses of the upcoming 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) High Level Week will be the accessibility of vaccines and a renewed plea for a global ceasefire. “I will make a strong appeal to the international community to mobilise all efforts for the global ceasefire to become a reality by the end of the year,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said on Wednesday. 

At the briefing, where he discussed the issues the UNGA will address, he also announced the launch of a report on how the U.N. has responded to the current pandemic. It details three approaches the U.N. has taken to address the crisis: a health response, a focus on safeguarding lives and livelihoods, and a transformative recovery process that aims to address the “underlying fragilities and identifying opportunities for transformative change towards more just, equal and resilient societies and economies”.

In an interview with U.N. News on Sept. 15 Guterres called for a COVID-19 vaccine to be made available to everyone. 

“To think that we can preserve the rich people, and let the poor people suffer, is a stupid mistake,” he said.

The report calls for the “most massive public health effort in history” — a move that is made possible by a global collaboration between countries putting together the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator. 

The ACT-Accelerator, which the Secretary-General also mentioned in his speech, has been designed to accelerate the development, production and proper access to tests, treatments as well as vaccines, according to the report. The ACT-Accelerator employs different stakeholders such as governments, those in the field of science and health, and civil society members among others. 

Guterres further reiterated that while it’s important to keep driving towards a vaccine, it’s crucial to keep other factors in mind when discussing a vaccine. 

“A vaccine alone cannot solve this crisis; certainly not in the near term,” he said. 

“We need a vaccine to be affordable and available to all – a people’s vaccine,” Guterres added later. “That means a quantum leap in funding for the ACT-Accelerator and its COVAX Facility.”  

“For any vaccine to work, people across the globe need to be willing to take it.”

He warned against the rapid rise in misinformation campaigns about vaccines, leading to “vaccine hesitancy and igniting wild conspiracy theories”. 

This concern is also highlighted in the report, which introduces the U.N.’s “Verified” project, an initiative to “share clear, compelling content, and fight lies with fact-based advice and solutions”. With the work of more than 18,000 people battling misinformation, the initiative has reached 400 million people, according to the report.  

The report also showed a glaring difference in the budget required to address the current crisis against the resources raised. 

For a “Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan”, which prioritises addressing immediate health needs, there is a need for $1.74 billion, but so far $1.44 billion has been raised. 

For the Global Humanitarian Response Plan, which focuses on 63 highly vulnerable countries, the requirement is $10.31 billion, but only $2.48 billion has been raised. 

For responses to the socio-economic response and recovery in middle- and lower-income countries, the “U.N. COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund”, the required amount is $1 billion, and the amount raised is $58 million. 

Meanwhile, Guterres also highlighted other issues the world is reeling from at the moment and put a light on how these issues are all interlinked in different ways: such as climate change, gender inequality. He added that the world’s recovery from this crisis should address all of these issues. 

“Recovery must be green. Subsidising fossil fuels and bailing out polluting industries means locking in bad patterns for decades to come,” he said. “Recovery must advance gender equality. And recovery requires effective multilateralism.”

Kailash Satyarthi, founder of Laureates and Leaders for Children and 2014 Nobel Peace Laureate, says the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the deep inequalities faced by the poorest families. Courtesy: Marcel Crozet / ILO

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 7 2020 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the lives of millions of people worldwide, accounted for over 869,000 deaths, destabilised the global economy and triggered a marked rise in poverty and hunger in the developing world.

But the fallout from one of the most devastating consequences of the spreading virus is on the lives of a growing new generation: children.

Kailash Satyarthi, founder of Laureates and Leaders for Children and 2014 Nobel Peace Laureate, rightly points out that the pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the deep inequalities faced by the poorest families, who are the least equipped to protect themselves in times of global crisis.

“However, despite unprecedented government spending to protect national interests and the global economy,” he warns, “little has been allocated to protect the 1 in 5 children who live on $2 per day or less.”

Without urgent action now, he said, “we risk losing an entire generation”.

An upcoming summit – officially called the Nobel Peace Laureates and Leaders for Children at a Fair Share for Children Summit, scheduled to take place remotely on Sept. 9-10 – will focus on the plight of children, and more importantly, call for increased spending on marginalised families ravaged by the pandemic

Several Nobel laureates, along with world leaders and heads of UN agencies, are listed as speakers, including the Dalai Lama, Satyarthi, Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Leymah Gbowee, Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan, and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, among others.

Kailash says if the world gave the most marginalised children and their families their fair share, which translates to 20 percent of the COVID-19 response for the poorest 20 percent of humanity, the results would be transformative.

Kul Gautam, a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told IPS the COVID-19 pandemic has commanded unprecedented attention and action throughout the world in recent months.

While some leaders have tried to capitalise it for their own political gain, there has also been an outpouring of support and solidarity for international cooperation to tackle it, he noted. 

Though subjected to unfair and unfounded criticism by leaders like United States President Donald Trump, he argued, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the U.N. system are playing a valuable coordinating role and providing much needed technical and material support, particularly for developing countries

“While the elderly and those with pre-existing health complications are the most susceptible to COVID-19, as always, women and children often become extra-vulnerable not only from the virus but also from their exposure to domestic abuse, gender-based violence and lack of effective social safety nets in most societies.”

“Millions of children being deprived of schooling and confined at home for a prolonged period threatens their future,” declared Gautam.

Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and Chair of The Elders, points out the COVID-19 pandemic is leading to a global child rights crisis with increases in poverty and hunger, child labour and child marriage, child slavery, child trafficking and children on the move. 

“We must ensure that the most marginalised children and communities have their fair share of the relief funds and services.  We must unite in this effort to protect the most vulnerable among us,” she warns.

Mohammad Rafique, along with other refugee children, gathered at the Rohingya market of Kutupalong camp to sell vegetables he brought earlier from a local market in this photo dated Mar. 11, 2020. This was two weeks before Bangladesh went into a nationwide lockdown in an attempt to contain the spread of the coronavirus. the pandemic is leading to a global child rights crisis with increases in poverty and hunger, child labour and child marriage, child slavery, child trafficking and children on the move. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

Kerry Kennedy, President of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, says the pandemic’s public health emergency is set to exacerbate the abuse and exploitation of children, including those in detention.

Calling for government action, Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan, said: “We need the governments of the world to come together to announce a rescue package for the most marginalised children and their families.”

The ongoing crisis could increase the number of children living in monetary poor households by up to 117 million by the end of the 2020, according to the latest analysis from UNICEF and Save the Children. 

“Immediate loss of income often means families are less able to afford basics, including food and water, are less likely to access health care or education, and are more at risk of violence, exploitation and abuse”.

The children’s agency also pointed out that 188 countries have imposed countrywide school closures, affecting more than 1.6 billion children and youth. The potential losses that may accrue in learning for today’s young generation, and for the development of their human capital, are hard to fathom.

“More than two-thirds of countries have introduced a national distance learning platform, but among low-income countries the share is only 30 percent. Before this crisis, almost one third of the world’s young people were already digitally excluded”.

UNICEF also said the COVID-19 crisis could lead to the first rise in child labour after 20 years of progress. Child labour decreased by 94 million since 2000, but that gain is now at risk.

“Among other impacts, COVID-19 could result in a rise in poverty and therefore to an increase in child labour as households use every available means to survive. A one percentage point rise in poverty could lead to at least a 0.7 percent increase in child labour in certain countries.”

Gautam, who was Director of Planning and responsible for drafting the Plan of Action at the 1990 first-ever World Summit for Children, told IPS: “So far, the international response and focus of national action to combat COVID-19 has not given enough attention to the multi-dimensional plight of children, especially in poor countries and communities”.

He said there is also an imminent risk that “Vaccine nationalism” in the rich countries will lead to life-saving treatments being over-priced and hoarded by the rich leaving the world’s most vulnerable people, especially children, waiting in the cold.

In this context, the initiative by a group of Nobel Peace Laureates and Leaders for Children calling for a fair share of the resources mobilised for COVID-19 to be devoted to the wellbeing of children is most timely and welcome, he said. 

“Children have only one chance to grow, and if they do not get the priority for protection from this devastating pandemic, they will be doomed for life. This simple truth is often forgotten or neglected by political leaders and decision-makers driven by short-term political calculations.”

Hence the importance of the voice of Nobel Peace Prize laureates with their moral authority and non-partisan credibility, he added.

A joint statement released here by Nobel Laureates and world leaders, said: “ We, the Laureates and Leaders for Children, call upon the world’s Heads of Government to demonstrate wise leadership and to urgently care for the impoverished and the marginalised. Decisions made by our leaders, actions taken by us and the discourses that ensue in the next few weeks will be crucial.”

“They are going to shape the future of polity, economy, culture and morality. Development priorities will be recalibrated, individual freedom, privacy and human rights will be redefined. We must take this opportunity to transform traditional diplomacy and politics into compassionate politics. COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated pre-existing inequalities in our world.”

While this virus does not differentiate between nationalities, religions or cultures, said the statement, it is most adversely impacting those who are already marginalised – the poor, women and girls, daily wage earners, migrant labourers, indigenous peoples, victims of trafficking and slavery, child labourers, people on the move (refugees, internally displaced and others), the homeless, differently abled people, among others.

The virus, restrictions placed on the majority of the world’s population, and the aftermath will have a devastating impact on the most vulnerable amongst us

Elaborating further on the potential dangers of “Vaccine nationalism,” Gautam singled out the  example of “Vaccine nationalism” — i.e the U.S. refusal to join the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility (Covax) – an international effort to develop, manufacture and equitably distribute a COVID-19 vaccine.  

The result of this US boycott of a joint effort by 170 countries coordinated by WHO, Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunisation (GAVI) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is that it could potentially lead to hoarding of the vaccine and higher prices for doses, he said.

“The ultimate victims of such “vaccine nationalism” are likely to be children in poor countries – who might be the last on the line to get the vaccine, contrary to the call for vulnerable “Children First” priority that organizations like UNICEF, Save the Children and others have been promoting for decades.” 

“I hope that the  Nobel Peace Laureates and Leaders for Children at a Fair Share for Children Summit will raise their voice against the risk of any such “vaccine nationalism,” Gautam declared.

The Laureates and Leaders for Children, founded in 2016 by Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, state that if the world gave the most marginalised children and their families their fair share, which translates to 20 percent of the COVID-19 response for the poorest 20 percent of humanity, the results would be transformative. According to the international Labour Organisation and the United Nations Children’s Fund, one in five children in Africa are involved in child labour. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Sep 4 2020 (IPS)

Regina Njagi’s four children, aged between 11 and 17, have not benefitted from online learning since the COVID-19 led to the closure of all schools in Kenya, earlier in March. With the closure, Njagi lost her job as a teacher at a local private school.

“As a widow, these are desperate times for me. I exhausted my savings by paying school fees for my two children in high school, just three weeks before the closure. How many times can I borrow food from relatives and neighbours? Everyone I know is struggling so the children must work. Otherwise, they will starve,” Njagi tells IPS.

Nobel laureates galvanise action for world’s vulnerable children

Njagi is not alone in having to send her children to work for the families’ survival. The impact of the pandemic on children will be a focus of Nobel Peace Laureates and Leaders for Children at a Fair Share for Children Summit on Sept. 9 and 10. Several Nobel laureates and heads states and directors of United Nations agencies are listed as speakers, including Nobel laureates the Dalai Lama, Professor Muhammad Yunus, Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman, and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, among others.

To globalise compassion and galvanise action for the world’s most vulnerable children, the Laureates and Leaders for Children founded in 2016 by Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, state that if the world gave the most marginalised children and their families their fair share, which translates to 20 percent of the COVID-19 response for the poorest 20 percent of humanity, the results would be transformative.

The Nobel laureates fear that despite pledges of unprecedented sums of money to support world economies, this may not reach children.

“As a result, COVID-19 could turn the clock back a decade or more on progress made on child labour, education, and health for hundreds of millions of children,” the Laureates say in a joint statement.

Satyarthi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, has personally rescued tens of thousands of children from slavery and will be one of the speakers at the Fair Share for Children Summit.  

As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on and concerns escalate that even more children have been placed in harm’s way, the Laureates and Leaders for Children is calling upon the world’s heads of government to demonstrate wise leadership and urgently care for the impoverished and the marginalised with a special focus on children.

“One trillion dollars would fund all outstanding United Nations and charity COVID-19 appeals, cancel two years of all debt repayments from low-income countries, and fund two years of  the global gap to meet the SDGs on health, water and sanitation, and education,” Laureates and Leaders for Children says.

Education is a particularly vital step as quality education is the most powerful way to “end exclusion and change the future for marginalised children. There would still be enough left to fund social protection safety nets which are crucial in the fight against child labour. More than 10 million lives would be saved, a positive response by humanity to the tragedy of COVID-19,” Laureates and Leaders for Children says.

No school but work during the pandemic

But from May to July this year, all four of Njagi’s children were unable to attend school as they were employed on a daily wage to pick coffee at plantations in the Mbo-i-Kamiti area, Kiambu County, Central Kenya.

The children are currently engaged in this year’s second coffee picking season which has just begun and will last through October. Njagi says her children will then participate in the final and major coffee picking season from October through December.

Picking coffee is a difficult job, and her children must leave for the plantation, some two kilometres away from their home in Kagongo village, by six o’clock in the morning.

After harvesting the coffee, each worker, child or adult, is expected to load their harvest onto waiting trucks which transport the day’s pickings to the local coffee factory.

All workers must do everything possible to get onto the truck with their coffee or else they will walk to the factory, at least a kilometre away. 

“At the factory, each person places their coffee on a weighing scale, and each worker is paid their daily wage based on the weight. I advised my children to combine their harvest because if the weight is too low, they might not get paid,” she adds.

Children across the world at risk

The World Bank estimates that globally the pandemic will push 40 to 60 million people into extreme poverty in 2020.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO), together with UNICEF, warns that a one percentage point rise in poverty leads to at least a 0.7 percent increase in child labour in certain countries. 

Child rights experts, such as Nairobi-based Juliah Omondi, are increasingly concerned that Njagi’s household is far from the exception. For millions of households across Africa, child labour is now a lifeline, and vulnerable children must adapt or starve.

Omondi is a member of the G10 (groups of 10 civil society organisations) local movement that agitates for the rights of women and children. She tells IPS that in “many African countries, including Kenya, Uganda, Botswana, Eritrea and Nigeria, international labour standards on the minimum age protection are ignored in the informal sector”.

In Nigeria, for instance, the National Bureau of Statistics show that as of 2019, 50.8 percent of Nigeria’s children were working full time. Omondi adds that the situation is dire in Africa’s poorest countries, including Mali, Niger, Somalia and South Sudan.

COVID-19 likely to exacerbate the abuse and exploitation of children

Danson Mwangangi, a regional socio-economic expert and independent consultant based in Kigali, Rwanda, says that the pandemic has provoked economic severe and labour market shocks and that children are bearing the brunt.

While the number of working children has fallen by 94 million since the 2000s, the plight of Njagi’s children confirms fears by the ILO that the pandemic is likely to exacerbate the abuse and exploitation of children and roll back progress towards the eradication of child labour.  

“Ongoing crisis will make it exceptionally difficult for the United Nations to realise its commitment to end child labour in the next five years. For the first time in 20 years, we are going to see a spike in the number of child labourers,” Mwangangi warns.

The impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable children clearly visible

ILO pre-pandemic statistics indicate that approximately 152 million children between the ages of five and 17, or one in 10 children, worldwide work. Of these, 73 million are in hazardous work. Nearly half of all children in labour are from the African continent and are aged between five and 11 years. 

According to ILO, 85 percent of child labourers in Africa are in the agriculture sector; another 11 percent are in the services sector, with the remaining four percent in industry.

“We are beginning to see the fallout. More child marriages, more girls being employed as domestic workers and, unfortunately, domestic work for children in Africa has been normalised,” Omondi says.

Mwangangi agrees. He says that while statistics by child agencies, like the U.N. Children’s Fund, show that one in five children in Africa is in child labour, there is a general understanding that this does not include underage domestic workers such as house girls and farm boys.

Unfortunately, child labour is not the only problem facing marginalised and vulnerable children in Africa.  When Save the Children released a report in July entitled “Little Invisible Slaves”, it became apparent that COVID-19 has created more children vulnerable to trafficking and revealed that the world lacks much-needed child protection infrastructure.  

The report says that COVID-19 “changed the pattern of sexual exploitation, which is now operating less on the streets and more indoors or online”.

Omondi speaks of fears that millions of children are trapped in houses with their abusers and that it has becoming that much more difficult to reach them.

Save the Children estimates that of the 108,000 cases of human trafficking reported in 164 countries in 2019, at least 23 percent involved children.

Worse still, one in 20 child victims of sexual exploitation worldwide is under eight years old. Overall, Africa accounts for eight percent of child sex trafficking in the world.

According to the United States Department of State, 19 percent of world’s enslaved population is trafficked in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the same breath, nearly half of all countries in Africa including Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Lesotho, Tunisia, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi and Botswana have been flagged as notable sources, transit points and destination for people subjected to sex trafficking and forced labour. 

In Kenya, for instance, one of six such victims are children, this is according to the Trafficking Data Collaborative, a data hub on human trafficking. 

Meanwhile, Laureates and Leaders for Children caution that the inequalities the world’s children face, combined with the “impact of COVID-19 will reverberate for years to come”. But, they say,  “none will feel it as painfully as the world’s most marginalised children”.

Family farming is a “critical sector” for Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC), with approximately 16.5 million farm holdings across the region. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 17 2020 (IPS)

With limited transport options to carry their goods to the market, lack of protective gear, and limited financial resources, family farmers across Latin America are facing grave consequences as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to a survey carried out by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) with 118 family farming specialists — defined as professionals with high levels of knowledge in the agricultural sector in general and family agriculture in particular — across 29 countries, many of the respondents said they were already facing the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Family farming is a “critical sector” for Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC), according to the IICA report, with approximately 16.5 million farm holdings across the region.

Mario Léon, manager of IICA’s Territorial Development and Family Agriculture Programme, at the headquarters in San José, Costa Rica, told IPS that 80 percent of LAC’s production units are family farming units, with 56 percent of them being in South America and 35 percent in Mexico and Central America. These holdings account for between 30 to 40 percent of the agricultural GDP of the region. Given the pervasive fear among customers of contracting the coronavirus, it’s farmers who are suffering: with difficulty in  selling their products and being able to carry them to the market.

“However, it is possible that the most dangerous food shortages may occur in those regions and countries that are net food importers, particularly among the most vulnerable sectors of the population (the poor and indigent),” Léon told IPS.

Full excerpt of the interview below:

Inter Press Service (IPS): Throughout the survey, it consistently appears that “restrictions on travel and movement” is a key factor affecting the family farmers. What role does traveling and commuting play in business for them?

Mario Léon (ML): Many LAC regions with FF communities are far removed from urban centres and have an inadequate road network, which creates logistical costs and increases the prices at which goods are ultimately sold. When transportation is restricted, they cannot receive production inputs or even those food products that may not always be produced or available in rural communities, such as noodles, sugar, oils, cleaning or personal care items, medicine, etc. If production inputs do not reach communities, agricultural activities cannot continue. Similarly, during the harvest, if transportation is restricted, products cannot be distributed and since storage, silos and refrigeration facilities are not always available, the produce is wasted. This is partially due to a lack of organisation and the inability to access proper transportation for distribution.

IPS: How has the restriction of movement affected family farming?

ML: Measures taken to curtail the pandemic, such as restricted movement, has affected family farming in various ways. On the demand side, it has caused the temporary closure of outlets and services, including food stores, which has led to a contraction in the food demand, which in turn has forced prices downward and has made it difficult for some producers to place their products on the market. Consumers have also reduced their visits to traditional markets, out of fear of contracting the virus.

On the supply side, given that family farming  production activities are not usually labour intensive and that most of its production processes have always been done without the need for close physical contact, the effect of the pandemic on this aspect is thought to have been minimal, for now. The limitations it faces, therefore, relate more to services to transport agricultural products to markets and the restrictions on vehicular movement in the countries.

IPS: Is the current crisis affecting any marginalised groups within family farming differently: such as women or indigenous communities? 

Yes. Women play a leading role not only in the home but also in the production and selling of food. They are the ones normally involved in short circuit trade and in the selling of products, allowing the family to generate an income. They manage the household and complement the efforts of the production unit. In many countries, women are responsible for horticulture production, the growing of medicinal plants and the rearing of small animals.

Women are also involved in processing family farming  production, via small scale agro-industry. When sales outlets are temporarily closed or restricted, this limits their options and affects them directly. The situation is more complex in indigenous communities. Distance, the lack of communication media or outlets to sell their craftwork is aggravated by social confinement and makes their situation worse.

IPS: In what ways do you believe these groups have been affected?

ML: Although the survey did not conduct an in-depth assessment of how these marginalised groups have been affected, one would expect that they have and perhaps more, given that the demand for food has been decreasing, creating increased competition among producers to access markets. Producers who are more equipped and have more linkages to trade channels have been able to access markets, causing marginalised groups to be displaced and their income to be reduced. Social distancing measures have also exacerbated the effects of the pandemic on marginalised groups that, even before the crisis, had limited access to production services and markets, which is a situation that has now been further aggravated by their limited digital education. This has affected their capacity to promote their business undertakings during the pandemic.

IPS: The survey report says, “There has also been a decline in available drivers and transport operators, arising from restrictions imposed as preventive measures or through fear of the risks associated with transmitting and contracting the virus.” Do family farmers often rely on outsourced drivers and transport operators to take their produce to markets? 

ML: Local markets, including collection and supply centres as well as retail markets, are the primary destination for family farming products in Latin America. Most producer organisations are of an informal nature and lack any kind of legal status; therefore, they are unable to enter into commitments relating, among other things, to the purchase of vehicles to transport their products to markets. As a result, their market access is dependent on intermediaries, namely transporters who collect products and then transport them to sales centres, reducing profit margins for producers. Some family farmers do have their own transport services, either because they form part of an association or, in just a few cases, because they are able to generate enough income to purchase their own vehicles; however, the vast majority of farmers rely on intermediaries. Quarantine measures have reduced the availability of transport services. Additionally, due to a lack of sanitary protocols, entire crews of truckers at several companies have fallen ill with the virus, which has hindered the transportation of products.

IPS: The survey says, “this relationship between producers and intermediaries was most affected in zones in which associative enterprises had been weakened the most, thereby limiting the negotiating power of family farmers.” What factors lead to this reduced negotiating power for them?

ML: Because marketing processes via producer organisations have come to a standstill, farmers have undertaken individual efforts to sell their products at the prices offered by intermediaries. Collective marketing has been affected by reduced product volumes and the absence of contracts and/or agreements that foster social cohesion within producer organisations, which were already weak.

A boat on Pasig River in the Philippines. The Philippines has the highest mortality rate from the coronavirus in Southeast Asia. Credit:Kara Santos/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 31 2020 (IPS)

Southeast Asia’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been efficient, but some areas such as data privacy, measures to go back to normalcy after lockdown is lifted, and resources for migrant or transient populations will need addressing. 

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said while the pandemic has introduced new challenges in the region, including threats to peace and security, “containment measures have spared Southeast Asia the degree of suffering and upheaval seen elsewhere”. 

Speaking at the launch of a U.N. policy brief exploring the impact of COVID-19 in Southeast Asia on Thursday, Jul. 30, Guterres lauded the efficient methods adapted by leaders in the region, while highlighting the ways in which the region has fallen short in its response to the pandemic. 

“Already, hate speech has increased and political processes have stalled, leaving several long-running conflicts to stagnate and fester,” Guterres said during a video call marking the launch. He noted that while governments in Southeast Asia had supported his appeal for a global ceasefire, the region had much work to do, “but has formidable capacities at its disposal”.

• According to the think-tank Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Philippines has the highest mortality rate from the coronavirus in the region, followed closely by Indonesia.   
• The U.N. policy brief noted that Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Timor Leste and Vietnam had recorded zero fatalities at the time of its publication.

COVID-19 worsening weak systems

As in most regions, COVID-19 has affected the most vulnerable communities and worsened pre-existing concerns. In Southeast Asia, the report identified some of the most pressing issues: weak healthcare systems, conflict in areas such as Myanmar, as well as the plight of migrant workers. 

The Asia and Pacific region hosts about 20 percent of the world’s 163.8 million migrant workers globally, according to a 2017 report by the International Labour Organisation. 

The U.N. policy brief raises alarms that migrant and transient workers in some Southeast Asian countries have been left out of the host country’s pandemic response. For many migrant workers, living in close quarters leaves them little option to maintain social distancing or other protective measures. With concerns over the spread of the virus, some governments have also capitalised on this fear to deny entry to asylum seekers, according to the U.N. brief. 

“Non-nationals are at particular risk of exclusion from public health responses due to legal or practical barriers. This creates a systemic vulnerability for disease control in the subregion,” the brief notes.

The pandemic, as in all other regions, is disproportionately affecting women, in part because of limited access to sexual and reproductive health services as well as due to increased hours of domestic labour — the burden of which falls on women in the region. This is especially prevalent in the Philippines and Thailand, says the policy brief, claiming that women in these countries “are more likely to face increased unpaid domestic and unpaid care work because of COVID-19, exacerbating mental and emotional health concerns”. 

Meanwhile, illegal drug smuggling has not decreased in the region despite the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown, while human smuggling has actually increased at the Bay of Bengal, the policy brief claims. 

The pandemic response, while prompt, was further exacerbated by an already weak healthcare system in the region. 

“More than half of the subregion’s countries are vulnerable because of weak health systems, including Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, the Philippines and Timor Leste,” says the brief. This, added with other social issues; such as temporarily stopping measles vaccination campaigns in the Philippines, as well as other limited humanitarian assistance due to the lockdown, has only added to the layers of the crisis. 

Challenges brought upon by measures

There are also concerns raised by the measures introduced by governments in the region to contain the virus. 

“Vaguely worded provisions without necessary safeguards and limitations have the potential to restrict the rights to information, privacy, and freedom of movement, expression, association, peaceful assembly and asylum,” the policy brief claims. 

At the core of these concerns is the issue of personal freedom, and experts are already raising alarms that some of the responses have the hallmarks of authoritarianism.

A June analysis by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) claims there are concerns of Southeast Asian countries inching towards authoritarianism as governments use the pandemic as an excuse to enforce strict measures and to attack opponents.

The analysis also points out some might be associating the success of containing the virus with authoritarian ruling. 

“There is a perception that authoritarian regimes in Southeast Asia have better managed the pandemic than the region’s democracies, a narrative buoyed by China’s diplomatic efforts to propagate its own accomplishments despite even greater success stories in South Korea and Taiwan,” says the analysis. 

Regional cooperation

Despite some of the challenges, the countries within the region have supported each other. According to CSIS, many of the Southeast Asian countries have exchanged, provided and accepted donations from and to each other. China has faced criticism from countries outside the region for attempts to start a “mask diplomacy” which caused countries in Europe to be cynical of her donation offers, but her neighbours accepted them. 

The Chinese government, as well as private entities such as Alibaba and Jack Ma foundations, has provided neighbouring countries between 75,000 to two million masks, among other services such as test kits, according to CSIS. 

The Secretary-General applauded the regional cooperation during this time of crisis. 

A woman farmer selling her produce at a local market in Casamence, southern Senegal. In sub-Saharan Africa, 90 percent of those in informal employment, which is typically low-skilled with poor working conditions, are women. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD , Jul 20 2020 (IPS)

Growing up in the Senegalese capital of Dakar, Siny Samba (28) watched with fascination as her grandmother made snacks for her family, using the fresh fruit from their garden. She would often help her grandma make these snacks to feed the neighbourhood children.

“One day, I am going to have snack parties for children like Granny does,” Samba would tell herself.

But years later, when she visited local stores to buy fruit preserves, she was disappointed to see only expensive, imported products on the shelves. They neither tasted as fresh as her Grandma’s ones, nor where they as high in nutritional value.

So in 2017, armed with a degree in food processing engineering from France, Samba launched Senegal’s first baby food startup – Le Lionceau (The Lion Cub). Her goal: to provide Senegalese mothers and infants with a choice of locally-processed food, made from organic, fresh farm produce.

Initially, she started with three types of fruit jams. But now, three years later, she has expanded to 15 products, including jam, jelly, marmalade, cereal and biscuits. Her company now employs nine people and also trains fruit and vegetable farmers across Senegal in safe harvesting techniques and safer storage methods as well as the organic certification process. 

“We have a very simple philosophy: make the best use of our country-grown fruits and vegetables and sell to people who love feeding their children healthy, nutritional products. So, we are building a business that sustains and improves the local food value chain and organic farmers while providing high quality food to Senegalese people,” Samba tells IPS.

Senegal – a fertile ground for startups

Samba’s Le Lionceau is one of the many startups that have mushroomed up across Senegal in recent years.

According to VC4A — an organisation that provides technical and financial support to startup ventures globally and in Senegal — there are 128 registered startups in the West African nation, over a dozen of which are owned by women.

However, it is often assumed that the number of women-owned startups are much higher as many women entrepreneurs hesitate to register their businesses due to high taxes, which include 18 percent Value Added Tax (VAT) and 30 percent company taxes.

The figures are not unusual for the continent.

“Participation in informal employment that is typically low-skilled and comes with poor working conditions is higher among women than men. In 2018, this was the case in more than 90 percent of sub-Saharan African countries,” states a policy document by the Deliver for Good campaign, which promotes 12 crucial investments in women and girls, including dramatically reducing gender-based violence; the respect, protection and fulfilment of sexual health and rights; ensuring equitable and quality education as well as boosting women’s economic empowerment.

However, the introduction of the Senegal Startup Act promises to provide support for startups, while easing their tax burden.

The law was passed in December 2019 after 19 months of intense consultation and discussions among 60 Senegalese innovation enthusiasts, 20 startup supporter organisations and government representatives, including the tax authority, and the education and economy and finance ministries.

The law aims to promote and provide tax breaks and other benefits to innovative new businesses in various fields, ranging from food and agriculture to health and mobile banking. Senegal is only the second African country after Tunisia to have such a law supporting startups.

Perhaps it will create an encouraging environment for women entrepreneurs, but the law itself has no special provisions for them. 

“The new law is really a big ball of hope for all of us who have started without any external help and were struggling to create everything from scratch, like consumer awareness, training of suppliers, creating a conducive market, building infrastructure etc,” says Samba.

Giving the information women need

• In Senegal, 49.9 percent of women of reproductive age have anaemia, says the global nutrition report which profiles the burden of malnutrition at the global, regional, sub-regional and country level.
• In children the rate of acute malnutrition is nine percent, which is higher than the developing country average of 8.5 percent, the report states.

Despite the high burden of challenges, resources are always inadequate, say many experts.

There is never enough credible information available to mothers on malnutrition, nor is there enough funding for those who are working to improve women’s and children’s health, says Fatou Ndiaye Turpin, the executive director of Réseau Siggil Jigéen (RSJ), a women’s rights organisation that aims to promote and protect women’s rights in Senegal.

RSJ is also one of the convenors of the Deliver for Good campaign coalition in Senegal, which is part of a larger, global campaign powered by Women Deliver. 

Seynabou Thiam, a Dakar-based digital entrepreneur and mother of two young children, agrees with Turpin. In Senegal, there isn’t enough credible information in the public domain on issues that mothers need such as childcare, child nutrition, mothers’ health and well-being etc., Thiam tells IPS.

In 2013, Thiam founded Yaay.sn, a social networking group for mothers that aims to close this information gap. The network, Senegal’s first digital social community, has over 12,000 members.

Using blogs, posters, videos and photographs as resources, Yaay.sn offers Senegalese mothers the information they need about childcare, nutrition and health though a platform that allows them to connect, share their problems and seek support from each other.

Thiam  has won several awards for her startup, including the Female Digital Enterprise Award in 2015 and Africa Digital Communication Days Awards 2019.

“We currently have two major platforms – a group page on Facebook and a channel on Youtube. The construction of our website has already started, so technically, we are in a transition phase right now. But I am hopeful that our website will be completed and operational soon,” Thiam tells IPS.

In 2011, only 15 percent of Senegalese had access to the internet, according to World Bank data. But today, less than a decade later, the number has dramatically increased to 58 percent. The rapid digitisation is an encouraging factor for women who have the potential to become digital entrepreneurs, says Thiam.

“Women have a systemic approach to business. Sustainability is always at the back of their mind, even as they create wealth. They also constantly think of the welfare of those around them – including their families,” Thiam tells IPS.

Women sell farm produce in Casamence, southern Senegal. Evidence shows that women’s full participation in the economy drives better performing and more resilient businesses and supports economic growth and wider development goals for nations. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Joining the Fight Against COVID

Gaelle Tall is the co-founder and chief sales officer of Paps, an e-logistics start-up that provides delivery services across Senegal. When the COVID-19 crisis began to effect the country, which has no online grocery stores, Tall quickly added a new service to Pap’s offers: delivery of food, water and hygiene products to people living under lockdown restrictions.

Another health startup which has been quick to join the fight against COVID-19 is SenVitale, which created the Passeport Universelle de Santé.

Launched in 2017 and co-founded by 22-year-old Nafissatou Diouf, the Passeport Universelle de Santé is a QR scan of a patient’s medical data that is integrated on a card, bracelet, or a pendant. Doctors can instantly access patient medical data by scanning the QR code.

When the COVID-19 outbreak reached Senegal, SenVitale created a web platform where citizens can take a coronavirus self-assessment test before approaching a medical facility. So far, over 100,000 people have taken the test, thereby taking some burden off a stressed national health service. Senegal has over 8,000 cases reported. 

“I lost my aunt who died mainly because she couldn’t find enough information on her sickness. So, we wanted to find a system that would help our doctors and health practitioners act faster,” Diouf, who won Best Startup of the Year (Senegal) awards and also the Feminine Coup de Coeur awards in 2019, tells IPS.

Areas awaiting urgent interventions

Senegal’s population, currently 16.7 million, is expected to rise to 22.3 million by 2030.

“In such a context, reproductive health programmes for young and inactive populations are essential for Senegal to capture the demographic dividend and for the country’s economic and social situation to improve,” Turpin tells IPS.
She identified four crucial areas of women’s health that urgently need greater attention: maternal mortality, access to contraception, information on reproductive health and investment.

The current volume of investment and attention to all of these four areas remains inadequate, although some NGOs are providing services, Turpin says.

“The NGOs are closely linked to public health structures and most of the time operate as referral clinics for public sector clients. These NGOs also create digital platforms to facilitate access to information and products on sexual and reproductive health,” she adds, admitting that no start-up business has stepped into the reproductive health area with a bankable service.

Perhaps its time for a woman to take on the challenge. “Evidence shows that women’s full participation in the economy drives better performing and more resilient businesses and supports economic growth and wider development goals for nations,” Women Deliver notes in a policy brief.

Meanwhile, female entrepreneurs like Samba are trying to add value to their current services by making videos on health, food quality, nutrition, organic food and the need for building immunity through the consumption of fresh, healthy food.

The videos in Senegal’s main indigenous language, Wolof, are free and handed to women and girls who purchase her products.

“Working for health, nutrition and food is hard,” she says, explaining that remains a lack of funding and infrastructure, taxes are high and there are many cultural barriers.

“For example, when I go for a business appointment with my male co-founder, people speak to him and ignore me,” Samba says.

But she believes things are changing.

“But (there are) many organisations providing training to women entrepreneurs, there are networking facilities. There is a new law plus the opportunity to improve women and children’s health. So, it’s an exciting time to have a startup.”

The textile industry in Pakistan, the largest manufacturing industry in the country, had been producing at full capacity this February. Prior to the worldwide coronavirus lockdown the government had lifted taxes and duties on the import of cotton. Currently thousands of garment and textile workers have been laid off and factory production has almost halted. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 2020 (IPS)

Unless there is a restructuring of debt for developing countries, the servicing for this debt will take away valuable resources from these nations that are needed to prevent the further suffering of people during the coronavirus pandemic — particularly with regards to safeguarding the health systems, and protecting the “integrity and resilience of economies”. 

This is according to Bogolo Joy Kenewendo, former minister of trade of Botswana, who was speaking to IPS on Wednesday, Jul. 1, after a roundtable discussion at the United Nations over the post-lockdown economy.

In order to prevent economies of developing countries from suffering disproportionately under the current pandemic, it’s crucial that there’s less protectionist thinking and that developed countries approach the economic downturn through means that empower developing countries, said  Kenewendo, who is also a former member of the U.N. secretary-general’s high level digital cooperation panel. 

“What’s important is that we have debt freeze and restructuring immediately, particularly for the developing countries because our resources are currently on so much pressure with the demand for social welfare to be extended, subsidies to be extended and then having some infrastructure needing to be put in place and paying interest on loans’.

“[This is] really putting a lot of pressure on the fiscal positions of many developing countries,” she told IPS. 

At the roundtable titled “Rebirthing the Global Economy to deliver Sustainable Development”, numerous distinguished female leaders spoke on the issue, reiterating solutions that focused on how to accommodate the needs of developing countries. 

Vera Songwe, executive secretary of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa, shared an incisive analysis on the importance of removing intermediary parties from trade exchanges during the discussion.

She stated that one of United States tech company, Apple’s, main imports is cotton. However, 80 percent of cotton imports are from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which is in a debt crisis. 

“The DRC sells cotton at $40 – $80, [but] on the market cotton goes for $400,” she said, adding that one priority for the next steps should be to brainstorm ways in which intermediation can be reduced. 

“My posit for trade and the new trade environment is that we do everything we can to take away every intermediary that exists between the original product and the end product,” she said. 

Kate Raworth, the senior visiting research associate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute, brought up the “ecological debt” that high-income countries owe to low-income countries. 

She said this kind of debt is much longer term, claiming that advanced regions such as Europe and countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, U.S. and Japan are living “beyond planetary impact”.

“We are destroying the climate system, we are destroying the ecological system, and that is the debt we owe to the lowest income countries of the world because we are undermining all prospects of development for them,” she said in an impassioned speech.

“They will have no fertile soils, no monsoon rains, no stable climate and they will have no capacity to develop.” 

Kenewendo told IPS that this is also a matter of the “capital flight” to developed countries that takes place during a crisis. 

“The real issue is that there’s a lot of [foreign direct investment] FDI that has been attracted to developing countries and emerging markets,” she said.

“And when there is such a crisis, you find this capital flight back to developed countries or to the west.”

This, she said, means the manufacturing income that developing economies had expected earnings from will suddenly be redirected to developed countries. 

“And it’s mainly because during a crisis, people look at the political and economic stability of economies and it might be found that in Africa, for example, our political instability becomes a problem,” Kenewendo said.   

These kinds of protectionist policies can really harm low-income or developing countries, and thus advocates suggest that not taking a “beggar thy neighbour” approach that only makes it less efficient. 

“Those kind of ‘inward-looking’ policies make the situation more difficult for everybody and they deepen and prolong the crisis for the global economy,” Kenewendo said, adding that it’s crucial that free flow of capital is maintained and a trading relation is established rather than an aid-based relation. 

She further noted the importance of digitalisation that the pandemic has highlighted and said it has a massive role to play in our economies going forward.  

“Digitalisation is not all about being online, but it’s also about using the mobile technology resources that exist in order to ensure a much broader level of inclusivity in its delivery,” she said. 

Citing Songwe’s example, Kenewendo said that in the conversation about reform, it’s key to ensure that “we are incentivising and stimulating investment”.

“It’s very important that we provide capacity for countries to tap into domestic capital and to also make sure that we’re safeguarding [small and medium-sized enterprises] SMEs and the resiliency of the informal sector,” she said.

the ongoing conflict and continued prevalence of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Mali, creates a worrying picture for the West African nation. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 25 2020 (IPS)

The current coronavirus pandemic is having a profound affect on children in conflict zones — with girls especially being at higher risk of violence and sexual health concerns.

“For adolescent girls specifically, these disruptions can have profound consequences, including increased rates of pregnancy and child, early, and forced marriage,” Shannon Kowalski, director of advocacy and policy at the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC), told IPS. 

Kowalski shared her concerns this week after an open debate on children and armed conflict at the United Nations, where experts shared the progress made in the efforts to pull children out of conflict-ridden circumstances, as well as how the current pandemic has made the issue more complex.

Virginia Gamba, special representative of the secretary-general for children and armed conflict, said her team had documented 25,000 grave violations against children. 

Henrietta Fore, executive director of U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said at the Jun. 23 briefing that although the organisation had rescued almost 37,000 children in the past three years, there remains massive concerns about the number of children still in dire situations. 

She cited the U.N.’s monitoring and reporting mechanism statistics over the last 15 years that reflect this reality.

UNICEF documented a total of 250,000 cases of grave violations against children in armed conflict, including:

• the recruitment and use of over 77,000 children;
• killing and maiming of over 100,000 children;
• rape and sexual violence against over 15,000 children;
• abduction of over 25, 000 children; and
• nearly 17,000 attacks on schools and hospitals. 

The numbers reflect a grave — and timely – reality. On May 12, terrorists blew up a hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing 24 people, including two infants. Médecins Sans Frontières‎ (MSF) has since pulled out from the hospital citing security concerns.  

This only deepens the problem for marginalised populations such as women and children. Fore said children in conflict zones who are now further caught in the pandemic are at a “double disadvantage”, given that they’re likely finding themselves at “increased risk of violence, abuse, child marriage and recruitment to armed groups”.

A general increase in conflict

Experts say there has been a general increase in organised violence in various parts of the world under the pandemic. Sam Jones, communications manager at Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a data collection and crisis mapping project, told IPS that they’ve documented state repression and consequential violence in some places under the pandemic, while in some other cases, “warring parties have used the pandemic as an opportunity to escalate campaigns or push the advantage”.

Jones’ concern was reflected in Fore’s speech on Jun. 23, where she pointed out that when states manipulate this kind of crisis, it’s the children who are hardest hit. 

“Far too often, parties in conflict are using the pandemic and the need to reach and support children…for political advantage,” she said. “Children are not pawns or bargaining chips – this must stop.” 

Certain areas have seen what Jones said is the largest increase in organised violence since the pandemic broke out around the world: Libya, Yemen, India, Mali and Uganda. 

For all the countries, except Uganda, it was a mere intensification of already existing violence; in Uganda, the violence came in the form of government restrictions. 

“By mid-April, ACLED had already recorded more than 1,000 total fatalities from conflict in Mali. Over the first three months of the year, we recorded nearly 300 civilian fatalities specifically, a 90 percent increase compared to the previous quarter,” he said. 

“At best, violence has continued despite the pandemic, while at worst both armed groups and state forces could be using it as an opportunity to ramp up activity and target civilians,” he added. 

How conflict affects children and girls

The crisis in Mali is especially of importance as human rights advocates released a statement of concern just a day after the briefing, about Mali’s failure to curb female genital mutilation (FGM). 

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) raised alarms about the report released by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which stated more than 75 percent of girls under the age of 14 had gone through the practice as of 2015. 

Among other findings, the committee found that government has “failed to guarantee victims of female genital mutilation access to adequate and affordable health care, including sexual and reproductive health care”. 

Concerns raised by experts such as Fore and Kowalski, when put next to the data about the ongoing conflict and continued prevalence of FGM in Mali, creates a worrying picture for the West African nation.  

The committee report found that the women and girls in Mali already had limited access to sexual and reproductive health.

Meanwhile, Fore pointed out that the pandemic has exacerbated the lack of access for women and girls in countries that were already struggled to provide access. This raises the questions about how, on top of being a country in conflict, the pandemic is further exacerbating the health of girls who suffered FGM in Mali.

Fore said the current pandemic further adds layers to the crisis surrounding children in armed conflict.

“As the pandemic spreads, healthcare facilities have been damaged or destroyed by conflict, services have been suspended, children are missing out of basic medical care including vaccination, and water; sanitary systems have been damaged or destroyed altogether making it impossible for children to wash their hands,” she said. 

Meanwhile, Kowalski of IWHC raised concerns about U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent decision to pull funding from the World Health Organisation, and what that means for girls caught in conflict. 

“In addition, in most countries affected by COVID-19 we are experiencing increases in gender-based violence, reduced access to contraception, abortion, and other reproductive health services, and a decrease in the quality of maternal health care — all which are intensified for women and girls in conflict,” she said. 

Gamba, after sharing the statistics of children suffering in conflict, ended her speech on an important note. 

“Behind these figures are boys and girls with stolen childhoods and shattered dreams, and there are families and communities torn apart by violence and suffering,” she said. “The only thing children and communities have in common today is their hope for peace, a better life and a better future. We must rise to meet that expectation.”

A girl in Bhubaneswar slums, India checks her e-learning assignments on a computer tablet. Courtesy: John Marshall/Aveti Learning

By Manipadma Jena
BHUBANESWAR, India, Jun 23 2020 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a new layer of challenges to inclusive education. As many as 40 percent of low and lower-middle income countries having not supported disadvantaged learners during temporary school shutdowns, finds United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s 2020 Global Education Monitoring Report  released today, Jun. 23.

Social, income and digital divides have put the most disadvantaged at risk of learning losses and dropping out. Lessons from the past have shown that health crises can leave many behind, in particular the poorest girls, many of whom may never return to school, the report says.

While at the infection’s April peak, over 90 percent of the global student population in 194 countries were affected by related school closures, pushing the world into the throes of the most unprecedented disruption in the history of education. As of Jun. 20, 62 percent of total enrolled students still remain impacted.

In India, according to UNESCO, the countrywide school closure has affected 320 million children enrolled from pre-primary to post-high school levels of education. About 158 million are female students.

India as other countries has decided that its schools will remain shut till the end of July and syllabus must be completed through e-learning, even as the COVID-19 infection curves sharply upwards with 440,215 positive cases.

Not all students and teachers have access to adequate internet connection, equipment, skills and working conditions to take advantage of available platforms. Also, not all available internet connections are strong enough to download data or take part in video calls. Most teachers and school administrators had to switch overnight to new tools to deliver lessons, distribute content, correct homework and communicate with students and their parents, the GEMR says. 

“The key to ensuring no one is falling behind during this crisis – and beyond – is to understand and cater for all the various different needs that students may have. Online learning might be a brilliant solution for some; radio broadcasts (and lessons through television) may be a more appropriate solution for others,” Manos Antoninis, Director of UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report (GEMR) 2020, told IPS via email from France.

“But no one single solution is perfect for all and there are some disadvantaged students – those who we are the most concerned about during today’s shut downs – who will not be served well by any current solution on offer. Their learning will suffer. Their attachment to school may weaken. Their families are likely to be plunged into poverty,” he added.

While private schools in India lost no time in providing their students with e-learning from March through Skype, email, power point presentations, YouTube and WhatsApp groups, it helped greatly that these generally better-income families had immediate access to electricity, internet, laptops or smartphones. For them e-learning was just one click away.

G. Lela Reddy, a rag-picker’s eldest daughter got admission and excelled in a mainstream school after she gained access to an e-learning platform. Courtesy: Ratnakar Sahoo/Ashayen.

At the other end are millions like 13-year-old’s like G. Lela Reddy, the eldest child of a single mother, who works as a rag-picker, in Bhubaneswar, in India’s eastern State of Odisha. Six years ago, a substance abuse rehab centre Ashayen (meaning Hopes) for children of rag pickers and beggars spotted Reddy and she began the bridging course that helped children join mainstream schools.

While studying she still works, daily segregating the waste her mother collects and minding her young brother at the centre while her mother goes out.

Before COVID-19 struck, Reddy had made it to 8^th grade in a government school, making a mark as a good debater, and a singer and dancer to Bollywood songs.

“In 2016, when we introduced a digital learning platform to these street children in our informal centres, we realised to our surprise that the drop-out rate was reducing exponentially,” Ratnakar Sahoo who heads Ashayen told IPS. “The deep disparity they hitherto had felt about not being able to hold and operate a mobile phone which they saw other better-off kids doing, was the motivation to come to school and to study,” he added.

Reddy mastered digital learning, and was soon helping others log in and guiding them with e-learning.

“What we tried to do is help bridge the digital divide in India,” Biswajit Nayak, California-based founder of the digital platform Aveti Learning, told IPS over phone. The social enterprise develops and provides digital learning content for under-served student communities in villages and urban slums of India.

“The real need for e-learning was never before more apparent than during the COVID-19 lockdowns,” he said.

Worst hit by school lockdowns are children of commercial sex workers who study through informal tutorials like these children in Kolkata city. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Since schools in India lockdown from Mar. 27 till Jun. 16, Aveti’s digital channel analytics shows that during the lockdown they had 2.2 million views, 250,000 hours of streaming, 232,000 unique users from all 30 districts of Odisha, according to Nayak, an IT professional.

“Quickly upgrading technology and synchronising our content to government-announced online weekly curriculum for secondary classes, we lost no time. Even when the lockdown was lifted, we retained flexibility pushing online streaming to 5pm onwards, so that working parents in single-phone households would be back home and share their phone for lessons,” Sibabrata Choudhury, director of Aveti Learning, told IPS.

Among several other e-learning mobile phone apps is Odisha government’s own Madhu App.

Choudhury assesses not only is mobile phones with internet penetration low, 1 in 5 villages, particularly tribal villages lack grid connection while a dependable power supply eludes large rural tracts. This makes access to e-learning difficult.

“Two days after lockdown in March when I visited the Ashayen students, none of them had eaten since two days, let alone keep up with studies,” Sahoo told IPS adding, “ neither could we get them to the centre nor had sufficient computer tablets to provide them at home.”

Reddy’s chances of lifting herself out of a life of poverty has been on pause as it has for millions of adolescent girls marginalised by the growing divide during lockdown. A mid-May 2020 rapid assessment by Delhi-based non-profit Praxis India in three Indian states finds 4 in10 girls could not attend e-learning, while over half spent less time on studies compared to before lockdown, owing to economic demands.

“Indeed, India’s 2017-18 National Sample Survey reported only around a quarter of households had internet access, and this is without looking at rates in rural areas. Once schools reopen after these shutdowns, they must take into account the learning hiatus just experienced, which will have affected the poorest most. Cutting syllabuses shorter is likely to be an inevitable but also appropriate solution,” UNESCO’s Antoninis said.

“India has useful (and replicable) lessons though,” he said. “Odisha introduced multilingual education in 21 languages since the mid-2000s, covering 1,500 primary schools for which online dictionaries have been published, with positive learning outcomes. Maharashtra revised many textbook images in 2019 to promote gender equality. But there is still a long way to go. Tribal people are seldom depicted in curricula, and, when they are, the material often provokes a sense of inferiority among tribal students.”

Antoninis said that COVID-19 has given everyone an “opportunity to think afresh about our education systems”.

“India (too) is presented with a chance for re-imagining syllabuses after this crisis to be more inclusive, less formulaic,” the director of the GEMR added.

A woman wearing a mask to protect herself from the contagion of the coronavirus, waits to buy food outside a store in the Playa municipality, in Havana, Cuba. As of Tuesday, Jun. 16, 1.7 million people have been affected by the virus across Latin America and the Caribbean -- doubling in the last week. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 18 2020 (IPS)

The multi-dimensional impacts of the coronavirus pandemic in Latin America could lead to a “hunger pandemic” if not addressed with urgency. 

Norha Restrepo, communications officer at the World Food Programme’s (WFP) Latin America office, shared this concern with IPS following a briefing by the United Nations agency on Tuesday about COVID-19’s impact on the region. As of Tuesday, Jun. 16, 1.7 million people have been affected by the virus across Latin America and the Caribbean — doubling in the last week.

Miguel Barreto, WFP’s Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, raised concerns about the region’s massive informal labour sector, which have been especially hard-hit by lockdowns, as well as the grave effects of other compounding factors such as food insecurity and climate change. 

“Our region already had problems related to economic and climate shocks, as well as insecurity and displacement,” he said at the briefing, adding that between 50 and 70 percent of workers in the region earn their income through jobs in the informal sector, which makes them more vulnerable and facing food insecurity under lockdown. 

“Now, with COVID-19 restrictions in place to save lives, millions have lost all or part of their income. Many do not know where their next meal is coming from,” he said. 

Restrepo echoed Barreto’s thoughts in conversation with IPS.

“In an extraordinary situation like this one, every other aspect of society will definitely be impacted,” she said. “But for the most vulnerable, the people who really depend on the society and the economy moving, the impact on hunger was immediately seen — and this can really get worse. So we definitely have to do much more to avoid this from becoming a hunger pandemic as well.” 

A vulnerable demographic

Experts all pointed out that Latin America and the Caribbean have recently become the hotspot for the virus because it’s a region that was already facing its share of struggles. 

“Latin American countries became hot spots because measures of prevention and control are much less effective than in industrialised countries,” Dr. Cesar Chelala, a global health consultant who has in the past voiced concerns about the public health issues in the region, told IPS.   

In a March 2019 report, Chelala detailed how issues such as “sprawling urbanisation, environmental problems, and increasing levels of obesity that affect all age” as well as prevalence of non-communicable diseases were a massive concern in the region.

With the virus being especially quick to spread in crowded areas, and affecting people with underlying conditions, the prevalence of Chelala’s highlighted factors are worrisome. 

“Any serious underlying condition lowers a person’s immunity and, as a result, the impact is much bigger. That is why not only very sick people but also older people are more prone to getting the most serious forms of the infection,” he told IPS.

Beyond the concerns of the direct impact of the virus, there are also concerns of secondary impacts — such as the consequences of the lockdown and food insecurity. 

With such a large part of the workforce being out of job during lockdown, the poor are only getting poorer, and having trouble accessing food — whether because of financial troubles or their inability to physically go to a store, said Restrepo of WFP.  

As a result, issues such as food insecurity have heightened, according to Restrepo, who added that with COVID-19, there has been an increase in people living with severe food insecurity — from 700,000 to 1.6 million people. 

Furthermore, she added, the migrant crisis is also affecting the situation. She said more than five million Venezuelan migrants are in the region, and are extremely vulnerable as they’re not part of any social protection system because they are not citizens.

These migrants also maintain informal jobs, and thus, for them it’s “extraordinarily complicated to cope,” she added. 

Meanwhile, other concerns about the individual economies in the region remain. 

Dr. David Alexander Walcott, Founder of NovaMed and a doctor in Jamaica, told IPS that given tourism is crucial for Jamaica’s economy, the lockdown means people are having to make difficult choices between earning a livelihood and remaining alive.

“One of the urgent issues to be addressed is how do we reopen our economy and allow the traditional sectors that have kept Jamaica afloat to thrive,” he said. “How is it that we tow the line between managing our caseload and being responsible from a public health perspective while being responsible from an economic perspective?” 

Solutions 

Potential solutions would require the collaboration of every actor, said Restrepo. 

In addition to that, Chelala pointed out the role the education sector can play in providing appropriate messages to the students and the general population. “Accessible water and sanitation, and the hygiene measures involved, are important to control the spread of the disease,” he added. 

Restrepo suggested that the countries would benefit from soft credit to governments by  international financial institutions. This way, she said, “governments can invest the money into protecting and supporting the most vulnerable people.”  

She also suggested social protection which can help people stay at home so those working in the informal work sector don’t have to go out or have to choose between death and an income.

She added: “Because the pandemic is such an enormous magnitude, it means everybody has to be involved — from the individuals to really enormous institutions with a lot of capital.”

India is an Asian country with a middle-income economy. An increase of poverty is expected in Asian countries as a result of the economic recession linked to the coronavirus lockdowns. This dated photo shows women from the Mishing community in Dhemaji district. Credit: Priyanka Borpujari/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 12 2020 (IPS)

Global poverty, which is increasing because of the economic impact of the coronavirus crisis and ensuing worldwide lockdowns, is shifting and a dramatic increase in middle-income developing countries in Asia is expected.

This is according to new research published by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER).

Andy Sumner, a professor of International Development at King’s College London and co-author of the report, told IPS that recent research which estimates the number of people who will be pushed into poverty because of the virus also shows that the increase in poverty could be an “absolute increase” for the first time in two decades. 

“The potential increase in extreme poverty could mark the first absolute increase in the global count since 1999—and the first since 1990 in terms of the headcount ratio,” he told IPS.

The research estimates that the COVID-19 pandemic could push between 80 to 395 million people into extreme poverty globally, under the World Bank’s definition of poverty of people living under $1.90 per day. When measured with the World Bank’s upper threshold of the poverty line (people living under $3.20 and $5.50 per day) the estimate of people to be pushed into poverty is even higher at more than 500 million people. 

Sumner, along with authors Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez of King’s College London and Chris Hoy of Australian National University, published the paper titled “Precarity and the pandemic COVID-19 and poverty incidence, intensity, and severity in developing countries” as a follow-up to their April report.

While the estimates remain similar to the ones made in April, Sumner said the key findings in this report show there will potentially be a major shift in the location of global poverty. 

This, he said, is because “poverty is likely to increase dramatically in middle-income developing countries in Asia.” Furthermore, the “intensity and severity” of poverty will also likely increase dramatically. 

“The resources needed to lift the incomes of the poor to the poverty lines could increase by 60 percent, from $446 million a day in the absence of crisis, to above $700 million a day,” he explained. 

Excerpts of the interview follow. Some of the answers have been paraphrased for clarity purposes. 

Inter Press Service (IPS): The impact of COVID-19 on global poverty seems to be a significant issue. What was the root cause of poverty in a pre-pandemic world, and what is the root cause of poverty currently in COVID-19’s context?

Andy Sumner (AS): The root cause of poverty in many developing countries is a governance failure to put in place more redistributive policies. This is made difficult for developing countries given their place in the global economy. In the context of COVID-19, the situation is made worse as so many millions of people live just above the poverty line and are at risk of falling back into poverty. 

IPS: Your report says “[the] potential effects that the current COVID-19 crisis could leave on poverty look more dramatic when focusing on the composition of global poverty since 1990.” Could you elaborate on this last part, about the ways in which the poverty arising out of COVID-19 could be more dramatic?  

AS: There could be much more new poverty not only in countries where poverty has remained relatively high over the last three decades, but also in countries that are not among the poorest anymore. This points not only to their population size, but also suggests that much of their previously poor people moved to just above the poverty line, and as a result implying that the recent progress they achieved has been relatively fragile. 

IPS: What is an indicator of the “intensity and severity of poverty” you mentioned in your report. How would the middle-income countries’ increase in poverty affect the distribution of global poverty?

AS: For “intensity and severity of poverty,” we estimate the daily income losses among the existing poor and new poor. As for the terms of the middle-income countries’ increase in poverty, many of them are in Asia, and are populous. As a result, changes in poverty in middle income countries will tend to shift the pattern of global poverty towards Asia.

IPS: One of your findings is also that “The resources needed to lift the incomes of the poor to the poverty lines, as indicated by the poverty gap, could increase by 60 percent, from $446 million a day in the absence of crisis to above $700 million a day under a 20- percent contraction.” Are governments and world leaders prepared with these resources? In the event these  resources are not met with, how will it further impact poverty levels?

AS: Governments in developing countries have started to try to address the poverty impacts of COVID-19 through increasing the size and coverage of social protection payments. This reflects a tiny fraction of what G7 countries have spent on their own economies.

The world’s richest countries have collectively spent trillions of dollars stimulating their economies. So far, Germany and France have spent 9 to 11 percent of GDP. The United States has spent 13 percent of GDP, while Japan has spent 21 percent of GDP since the crisis started. In contrast, we estimate the cost of ending both pre-crisis extreme poverty plus the new extreme poverty as a result of the crisis will be just 0.63 percent of the combined G7’s GDP. 

Malawi’s small scale traders selling their merchandise at Limbe market in Blantyre. Credit: Lameck Masina/IPS

By Lameck Masina
BLANTYRE, Malawi, Jun 11 2020 (IPS)

Malawi remains one of the few nations in the world that has not gone into a coronavirus lockdown as the government rushes to meet the conditions of a court order to implement a cash transfer scheme for the poor before doing so. But as some parts of the world are slowing coming out of their lockdowns, it could be likely this southern African nation won’t go into one as the rerun of the country’s presidential election nears. 

On Apr. 27, President Peter Mutharika announced the roll out of a multimillion dollar emergency cash transfer exercise aimed to cushion the peri urban poor from the impact of the coronavirus.

Mutharika said the $51 million bailout initiative targeted 172,000 households in the cities of Lilongwe, Blantyre, Mzuzu and Zomba.

The exercise, which was expected to roll out in May, was in response to demands from civil rights organisations, who obtained a court injunction against a planned 21-day lockdown scheduled to start Apr. 18, outlining the lack of measures to cushion the country’s vulnerable. The court ruled the cash transfer scheme be implemented and a lockdown would be suspended until then.

Under the World Bank-funded programme, beneficiaries will receive MK35, 000 (about $47) a month, for six months.

Country’s vulnerable still waiting

Widow Elizabeth Longwe has been earning her daily income by selling tomatoes at Limbe market in Blantyre. But since the country confirmed its first case of coronavirus on Apr. 2, her daily sales have reduced by almost half.

Her customers stopped purchasing from her for fear of contracting the virus, which has killed over 400,000 people across the globe.

“Instead, people started buying things in bulk and using them sparingly, making it difficult for small scale businesses like mine to enjoy the same kind of sales one would do on a normal day,” she tells IPS.

The mother of three says she “thanks God” that her lack of sales came after the government suspended schools in response to the pandemic.

“It would have been a disaster to me because I couldn’t have managed to provide transport money for my two older children to school daily. But still, my worry was how I would manage to feed my children,” she says.

But she had been hopeful for financial assistance when the cash transfer scheme was been announced.

So too was Lackson Tembo, who trades in second-hand clothes, also at Limbe Market.

“This was a relief to me because with this meant I would still be feeding my children. I would be able to buy soap for washing and bathing. I would be able to pay my monthly rent,” Tembo tells IPS.

Where is the money?

But Tembo and Longwe, who are among the first beneficiaries listed for the cash transfers, are yet to receive the money. And they have not been informed why. They fear that remarks by the country’s Vice President Saulos Chilima, who said at a political rally in May that donors have withheld the funds for fear of abuse, may in fact be true.

However, spokesperson for the Treasury Department in the Ministry of Finance Williams Banda tells IPS that the funds are there but disbursement is delayed because they have been working on “implementation modalities”.

“The World Bank was targeting the peri-urban hotspots of the major cities … [but] when the technical committee looked at the list, they noted that the targeted beneficiaries [vulnerable groups] were not on the lists,” says Banda.

Banda says this forced the technical committee to suspend the listing and start engaging with “the ones who do the normal social cash transfer, to get to those who are indeed vulnerable and very poor individuals in the peri-urban hot spots”.

Lockdown versus elections

However, many still doubt if the lockdown will ever take off as political leaders intensify their campaign rallies ahead of the country’s presidential re-run, expected to be held on Jul 2.

• Malawi is expected to go polls after the Constitutional Court nullified the country’s May 21, 2019 presidential elections citing massive and systematic irregularities, including the use of correctional fluid on the ballots. 
• In its verdict on February 3, the court ordered fresh polls within 150 days, which ends on July 3. Parliament, which is currently sitting in the capital Lilongwe, is expected to set a date for the fresh polls.

But at a political rally on Saturday, Jun. 6, in the Zomba City in southern Malawi, former President Joyce Banda accused the government of exaggerating figures of COVID-19 cases.

Malawi has so far confirmed 455 COVID-19 cases with 4 deaths and 55 recoveries. 

“Since April, we have only registered four deaths, and recently we saw the government faking people suffering from the coronavirus, to find an excuse to postpone the election through a lockdown, but still, more are recovering.

“Let’s just thank God that we have been spared from this pandemic rather than deliberately bloating cases to attract donor money,” she had said.

Her remarks were an echo of what other opposition leaders have been saying; that the government should forget imposing a lockdown as Malawians are eager to go to polls.

Cash transfer to start soon … but what of COVID-19 testing?

While it is uncertain if the country will ever go into a lockdown, Minister of Population Planning and Social Welfare Clara Makungwa tells IPS that with or without the lockdown, the emergency cash transfer will still roll out because of the increasing number of people impacted by COVID-19. This includes migrant workers who are returning home, as well as those who are unable to run their businesses as people implement their own social distancing measures here.

“Figures for those affected are getting bigger and bigger now. For example we have 17 busses coming soon with people [migrant workers who were stranded in South Africa because of the lockdown there] who are coming back home, they are helpless. Those that have businesses are suffering. They are not enjoying the usual business as they were doing before. These people still need assistance,” she tells IPS. 

Makungwa says some of the issues which delayed the roll out of the programme have been resolved and expectation is that the exercise would start by the end of this month.

“We needed to train the enumerators, brief the block leaders because they are the ones to benefit and also work with city councils.  So we have come that far and we are now ready for the enumerators to go round doing the enlisting and the programme will roll out,” says Makungwa.

However a lecturer in economics at Malawi Polytechnic, Betcheni Tchereni, tells IPS that although the cash transfer would help mitigate the impact of the virus on the poor, efforts to contain the spread of the virus should also be funded.

“The best thing that we should do is procure enough testing kits and make sure that pretty much everybody has been tested. That way then it will be alright and make sure that porous borders have been closed. Because you have seen that most of the people have been affected or infected because of someone who travelled from abroad,” Tchereni tells IPS.

Malawi with a population of about 18 million has just tested 13 COVID-19 testing sites according to the Public Health Institution of Malawi. About 6,000 people have far been tested.

By Daud Khan and Leila Yasmine Khan
AMSTERDAM/ROME, Jun 8 2020 (IPS)

As the COVID-19 virus spread rapidly around the globe, so did various theories about what caused the pandemic. According to the standard scientific theory, the virus originated in bats; crossed over to humans, probably via another intermediate host; and then spread rapidly across the globe.

While the mainstream scientific theory sufficed for some, a large number of people saw the pandemic as the work of cold-hearted military or industrial strategists. An equally large number of people saw it as some kind of divine or natural retribution for an increasingly recalcrinant human race. It’s interesting to look at these various alternative theories and to speculate why they have such a strong hold among the public.

In the first of this two part article we looked at the main conspiracy theories – the CIA, the Chinese, Big Pharma, Big Finance, Bill Gates. We suggested that a major factor underlying the popularity of conspiracy theories were primordial fears – fear of illness, of death but, above all, of the unknown.

Given the extent of this fear, which was fanned by the mainstream and social media, many people felt reassured having someone to blame. It meant that someone was in control; that there was a plan; and that once the pandemic had served its purpose, those in control would bring it to an end.

It may take a few cycles while the virus retreats, mutates and returns, but in few years or at most in a decade, we humans will be extinct and the planet will flourish again. The Gaia theory is well captured by some beautiful videos on social media showing how plants and animals are taking over urban areas

In this second part, we turn to look at a second set of theories that we call the apocalyptic theories.  Those who subscribe to these theories see the COVID-19 outbreak as the revenge of God or nature, or both, against the arrogance of humans.

The most radical of these theories is that Gaia – the primordial mother earth of Greek mythology and the self-equilibrating super organism, postulated by James Lovelock in his seminal book – is rebelling against humans.

Rebelling against the pollution and the poisoning of soils, waters and the air; against the plundering of forests and minerals; and against the tens of thousands of aircrafts buzzing around her day and night, and the hundreds of millions of cars constantly crawling all over her. According to this theory, the virus is Gaia’s revenge and marks the end of the age of humans.

It may take a few cycles while the virus retreats, mutates and returns, but in few years or at most in a decade, we humans will be extinct and the planet will flourish again. The Gaia theory is well captured by some beautiful videos on social media showing how plants and animals are taking over urban areas.

Other apocalyptic theorists feel that the pandemic is not a punishment from an ephemeral mother goddess. But rather it is a punishment from an angry and vengeful deity who is seeing his divine project going off track.  Mankind is progressively turning away from religion, from morals and traditions, and from family values.

The pandemic is God’s admonition to us to return to the righteous path.  And, for this reason, it has focused more on the godless and materialistic west, where among other misdeeds, old people are sent to nursing homes rather than being kept in the family.  In these theories, humankind may survive, but in order to do so, they must rediscover their moral compass and return to righteous way of life – whatever that means.

For those who subscribe to these theories, it is anathema to suggest social distancing and the closing of places of worship. In order for humans to survive, we must do exactly the opposite – gather together, preferably in temples, mosques and churches to seeking collective forgiveness from an angry god.  This is despite the fact that mainstream religious leaders, from the Pope to the Grand Mufti of Al-Azhar, have not said a word about Divine Will playing any role in the pandemic.

A more modest version of apocalyptic theories is that humans have overstepped a few boundaries and all we need to do is make some tweaks to our lifestyle to get back on track. One such theory relates to the waves emanating from the 5G telephone systems.

Proponents suggest that these waves facilitate the spread of the virus while also weakening human immune systems.  The fact that Wuhan, where the virus originated, is one of the places with the highest densities of 5G networks, apparently provides clear proof of the link between COVID and telephone waves.  So all we need to do is take a step back and decommission all the 5G towers.  And since the telecom companies will not do this, activists in some countries have taken it on themselves to set them alight.

So why are apocalyptic theories, even the most bizarre ones, so common?  If primordial fear drives conspiracy theorists, what drives the apocalyptic theorists? In our view it is collective guilt.  We have been warned, and warned again, and warned yet again about continued misuse of resources and lack of attention to planetary health.

We have been admonished time and time again about superfluous consumption, about waste of food and other essentials, and of the over use of fossil fuels and plastics.  We all know that our lifestyle is unsustainable and that that we are causing irreversible climate change. But despite this knowledge, and despite thousands of words written, documentaries screened, learned scientific conferences convened,  and hours of speeches by political leaders, we have failed to take the clear and drastic actions needed to make our lifestyles more sustainable. Knowing that we have been collectively misbehaving, it is almost a logical conclusion that a global disaster is a consequence of our bad actions.

Conspiracy and apocalyptic theories are widespread. And if they are related to fear and guilt, then such fear and guilt must also perforce be widespread.  Is this a cause for concern? Very much so. At an individual level, negative thoughts have clear negative effects on our mental and physical wellbeing.

Similarly, collective negative sentiments have quick and direct effect on our collective wellbeing and actions. Conspiracy theories or apocalyptic views of the world create anxiety, fear and depression among millions of people and cause immense harm and pain. More worryingly, this fear, anxiety and depression does not seem to go down as the pandemic abates. It seems it’s here to stay and poison our life for several years, if not decades.

Equally worrying is that there are plenty of local situations where such fears and worries can be easily manipulated as is happening in the USA, where President Trump continues to stroke these fears and uses this to apportion blame; or in India, where Prime Minister Modi is blaming Muslims for deliberately spreading the virus to damage the Hindu nation.

Daud Khan is a former United Nations official who lives between Italy and Pakistan. He holds degrees in Economics from the London School of Economics and Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology.

Leila Yasmine Khan is an independent writer and editor based in the Netherlands. She has Master’s degrees in Philosophy and in Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric from the University of Amsterdam, as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy from the University of Rome (Roma Tre).

COVID-19 has resulted in hunger and famine at historic proportions, with some 60 million people pushed into extreme poverty and half the global workforce -- 1.6 billion people -- left without work, and $8.5 trillion in global output lost. The setback in attaining the sustainable development goals (SDGs) has been tremendous and unless global leaders act now, the devastation will be unimaginable. Credit: Priyanka Borpujari/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, May 29 2020 (IPS)

Unless global leaders act now, the COVID-19 pandemic will cause unimaginable suffering and devastation around the world, the Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres said yesterday, May 28. He painted a picture of hunger and famine at historic proportions, with some 60 million people pushed into extreme poverty and half the global workforce — 1.6 billion people — left without work, and $8.5 trillion in global output lost. 

Guterres was speaking at an online event as world leaders and economists gathered at a high-level meeting to call for global solidarity and an acute focus on the interest of developing countries in the next steps for reviving the declining global economy. 

The talk, which focused on generating solutions to the development emergency resulting from the global pandemic, was co-convened by the U.N. Secretary-General, Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

All three leaders highlighted the need to keep the concerns of developing and underdeveloped countries as a priority in the decision-making process. 

Guterres laid out six key areas of focus that need to be addressed going forward: 

• enhance global liquidity;
• preventing debt crises; 
• engaging with private creditors on joint debt relief efforts; 
• global financial systems and sustainable development goals; 
• putting an end to illicit financial flows; and 
• rebuilding in improved manners.

“Many developing and even middle-income countries are highly vulnerable and already in debt distress – or will soon become so, due to the global recession,” Guterres said, adding that alleviating debt should be considered for middle-income countries in addition to Least Developed Countries.  

The Secretary-General further lauded the preparedness shown by the Caribbean and Pacific islands’ “early and decisive action” that ensured them protection from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Holness highlighted the need for a “large-scale, comprehensive multilateral effort” to address the financial fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“We are determined to support countries, particularly those most in need,” Holness said. “Our goal is to not only relieve the hardship they are currently experiencing, but to enable them to recover better.”

Trudeau echoed the same thoughts, and echoed the notion that keeping intact the economies of developed countries are beneficial for developing countries who may depend on them. 

“Our citizens need to have confidence in international institutions that leave no one behind and are capable of overcoming global challenges,” Trudeau said. “We know that jobs and businesses in each of our countries depend on the health and stability of economies elsewhere.”

David Malpass, President of the World Bank Group, pointed out that the COVID-19 pandemic and shutdown of developed economies will result in poverty for 60 million people, highlighting issues such as reduced incomes for migrant workers and a drop in remittance flows. 

“Wide spillover from the pandemic and the shutdown in advanced economies hit the poor and vulnerable, women, children, and healthcare workers hardest, deepening the inequality from the lack of development and making the health crisis even worse.” 

He announced a “milestone” they reached last week, having approved their emergency health operations which is now running in over 100 developing countries embedded in this programme and framework for finance.

Going forward, he said, the team is taking up new support programmes that “in coming weeks will help developing countries overcome the pandemic and reclaim focus on growth and sustainable development”. 

Dr Donald Kaberuka, Special Envoy from the African Union, who also spoke at a panel afterwards, warned against the world resorting to an individualistic approach as they reel from the economic collapse of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“After the global financial crisis, every country went back to address their own problems. Global solidarity declined very quickly,” Kaberuka said. “We can’t afford to let this happen this time.”

Holness further announced that the next step will bring together the government, international financial institutions and other key actors, to play their role: to create a plan based on the issues discussed at the high-level meeting, to report back to their co-conveners three times over the course of the rest of the year. 

Open drainage ditch, Ankorondrano-Andranomahery, Madagascar. Credit: Lova Rabary-Rakontondravony/IPS

By Gareth Willmer and Fiona Broom
May 26 2020 (IPS)

Crucial global goals to reduce hunger and poverty and curb climate change have gone backwards or stalled, the United Nations Secretary-General warns in a new report, as the COVID-19 outbreak moves from being a health crisis to becoming the “worst human and economic crisis of our lifetimes”.

The number of people suffering hunger has increased, climate change is occurring faster than predicted, and inequality is increasing within and among countries, António Guterres says in his ‘Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals’ 2020 report.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were launched four years ago to address the most pressing global needs for a sustainable future, including education and health improvements and reductions in social and economic inequalities.

“The effects of the pandemic and the measures taken to mitigate its impact have overwhelmed the health systems globally, caused businesses and factories to shut down and severely impacted the livelihoods of half of the global workforce,” he says in the report.

It comes on top of an existing slowing in progress towards many of the SDGs, and Guterres had launched a Decade of Action in September to turn things around.

The latest report, published last week (14 May), illustrates “the continued unevenness of progress and the many areas where significant improvement is required”.

The report has been released ahead of UN Economic and Social Council high-level meetings scheduled for July to provide a global, data-driven overview of the SDGs.

Women and girls

Last year’s report had already warned that there was “simply no way that we can achieve the 17 SDGs without achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls”.

In the 2020 review, Guterres says “the promise of a world in which every woman and girl enjoys full gender equality and all legal, social and economic barriers to their empowerment have been removed, remains unfulfilled”.

Only half of the world’s women who are married or ‘in-union’ make their own decisions regarding sexual and reproductive health and rights, based on 2007-2018 data from 57 countries, the report says.

“People are talking about a global response in terms of a vaccine, I think we should pay attention to those who are talking about a global response to the coming food crisis.”

Social and economic development has been shown to accelerate when women have access to mobile phones, the report says, but phone ownership remains higher for men than for women.

More than 260 million children were out of school in 2017 and 773 million adults — two-thirds of whom are women — remained illiterate in 2018.

As of 2019, less than half of primary and lower secondary schools in Sub-Saharan Africa had access to electricity, computers, the internet and basic handwashing facilities, the report states.

Billions of people worldwide still lack access to safely managed water and sanitation services, including 2.2 billion people without safe drinking water.

And, the world is projected to miss the target to end poverty in all its forms as hunger increased for the fourth consecutive year and about 50 million children experienced acute undernutrition. Globally, 144 million children under five were still affected by stunting in 2019, with three quarters of these children in Central and Southern Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa.

Claire Heffernan, director of the London International Development Centre, a membership organisation, says the SDGs are incompatible with the COVID-19 pandemic on a political level.

“The SDGs reflected the political will of the time,” she says. “Today, in the midst of this pandemic, I think it’s safe to say global political will is in short supply.”

Food crisis

Subir Sinha, senior lecturer in institutions and development at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), says he is sceptical of suggestions in the report that progress has been made on poverty, because the quality of data from national governments has become worse.

He says that wage protections and labour rights need to be made into political issues to ensure they stay on governments’ radars.

“COVID-19 is going to make questions of hunger much worse,” Sinha says. “People are talking about a global response in terms of a vaccine, I think we should pay attention to those who are talking about a global response to the coming food crisis.”

The SDG progress report comes after the United Nations predicted last week that the COVID-19 crisis could push 130 million more people into poverty in the next 10 years.

About 35 million people are expected to fall below the extreme poverty line this year as a result of the pandemic, with 56 per cent of them in Africa, the UN’s World Economic Situation and Prospects as of mid-2020 report predicted.

The global economy is forecast to lose a staggering US$8.5 trillion in production over the next two years due to the pandemic, the UN report says.

This is a “tremendous setback” for sustainable development, Elliott Harris, UN chief economist and assistant secretary-general for economic development, told SciDev.Net.

“[The pandemic] is particularly affecting the more vulnerable groups … because these are the ones whose activities generally require some form of physical proximity to others.”

Remittances

Remittances from migrant workers in the global North could face a hit – in countries such as Haiti, South Sudan and Tonga, remittances constitute more than a third of gross domestic product.

“You have an abrupt cut of people’s livelihoods and incomes, and then you’ve got different kinds of cascading effects through the bigger food system,” says Sophia Murphy, senior specialist in agriculture, trade and investment at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

There are also fears about what the pandemic could mean for long-term food security, with the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) estimating that 130 million more people in low- and middle-income countries may be pushed into acute food insecurity this year.

Bumper crops in some regions are at risk of being wasted. India has been hit by COVID-19 at harvest time, with crops left unpicked and difficulties getting grain to market for sale before it spoils.

This comes after rising hunger in the three years to 2018 pushed undernourishment back to levels seen around 2010.

Evidence of price rises has already emerged. In Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of the Congo, the WFP notes a 10 per cent surge in the price of a typical local basket of food – comprising fish, pulses, peanut paste, cassava flour, oil and condiments – in the space of two weeks.

The organisation expects food price rises to occur more widely, as this is happening in countries such as Syria, where prices have more than doubled in the past year.

“I think it’s probably much more widespread than we realise because we’ve never encountered an emergency on this sort of scale before,” says Jane Howard, head of communications, marketing and advocacy at the WFP’s London office.

“It’s like having an emergency in every single country that you’re working in.”

Some countries are already reeling from other problems, such as the locust swarms in East Africa, leading to potentially “devastating” impacts, she adds.

This story was originally published by SciDev.Net

South Africa’s white rhinoceros recovered from near-extinction thanks to intense conservation efforts. Experts around the world have called for international and local cooperation for biological preservation to prevent future pandemic. Credit: Kanya D’Almeida/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, May 26 2020 (IPS)

A future repetition of the current COVID-19 pandemic is preventable with massive cooperation on international and local levels and by ensuring biological diversity preservation around the world, experts recently said.

How to prevent the current crisis in the future

• According to the World Health Organisation the coronavirus originated in bats, and original theories had circulated the virus spread to humans from a wet market in Wuhan, China.

In celebration of the International Day for Biological Diversity held on Friday, May 22, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) held a series of panels, bringing together experts to speak about this year’s theme “Our solutions are in nature”.

The current COVID-19  pandemic was the key theme in all the discussions and various experts from around the world shared their thoughts on topics such as the link between the current coronavirus crisis and biodiversity, methods and practices that can unite different communities and solutions that humans can carve out from our access to nature.

Many of the experts echoed the notion that better conservation can play a crucial role in preventing such a crisis in the future.

“Better conservation of large intact natural areas, including natural world heritage sites and urgent measures to address illegal wildlife trade are really considered important to limit the emergence of new diseases in the future,” Mechtild Rössler, director of the World Heritage Centre (WHC), said at the panel. 

“Focus should not only be gazetting protected areas but also on creating and [enabling] conditions [where] these areas can fulfil their biodiversity conservation objectives,” she added.

Paul Leadley, a researcher at the University of Paris-Saclay, pointed out that human health is “linked indissociably” with the condition or health of nature, and that about 70 percent of emerging diseases are a result of human contact with animals, including causes such as deforestation and trade and consumption of wild animals.

As such, he said, it’s crucial that we have preventative measures instead of carving out measures only in response to a crisis, as is happening now.

“We need to be more proactive and researchers and decision makers must understand that we need it to be upstream,” he said at the “What changes are necessary?” panel. “We need to identify diseases that could emerge before they spread, [and] we [need to] start to better understand the change from transmission from animals to man.”

And these issues have an economic impact as well.

Rössler noted that heritage sites in 90 percent of the countries where heritage properties are located have been partially or fully closed due to loss of entrance fees, thus contributing to the local economy in a negative way.

Closures of sites have caused major socioeconomic impact for communities living in and around these sites, Rössler said, including disruption of community life, aggravated poverty and serious issues related to the monitoring of conservation practices.

Rössler isn’t alone in this observation.

Roderic Mast, co-chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature SSC Marine Turtle Specialist Group, recently told IPS that they have been receiving reports of how a lack of monitoring and enforcers on the ground have caused increased illegal poaching in places such as Indonesia and French Guiana.

International and local cooperation

Leadley, who is also an Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) expert, further said it’s crucial for international and local cooperation in order to prevent such transmissions.

Rössler echoed a similar thought, and called for a “stronger commitment” between all parties.

“We need a stronger commitment from all governments to conserve and manage these areas, to exclude them from unsustainable development activities and we need increased solidarity and cooperation among nations to achieve that,” she said, adding that it will also help communities further contribute to actions surrounding climate change.

Tim Christophersen, coordinator of the Nature for Climate Branch at United Nations Environment, highlighted the youth’s activism on the matter.

“We see the emergence of a global restoration movement from youth networks to communities that want to rebuild their livelihoods all across the world so this movement is already emerging,” he said at the panel “What are the possible ways to regenerate ecosystems and restore our connections with biodiversity?”

Christophersen is also a focal point for the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem restoration 2021-2030, and said the next decade has a lot of opportunities for learning between local and international communities.

“What we can do with the U.N. decade is to link local activities to a global umbrella to give people at a local level more tools and hopefully more resources, more inspiration and a connectedness to a global movement where we can learn from each other,” he said.

Students learn with tablets in a school in South Africa. Credit: AMO/Jackie Clausen

By External Source
May 25 2020 (IPS)

Many well meaning education benefactors and commentators in South Africa have expressed that in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic online self-guided learning could solve some of the current teaching problems and address the educational backlog. What learners need, the reasoning goes, is to get free internet access to educational support materials on offer online.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, self-guided online learning is doomed to fail. Research shows an exceptionally high drop-out rate – even in developed countries. Learners simply have no incentive to keep at their studies without peer pressure, a teacher at hand or a structured learning environment.

In South Africa in particular, with socio-economic disparities and related problems, the drop-out rate would be even higher. More so in key subjects like mathematics and physical science where prior knowledge, conceptual understanding and self-motivation to succeed are critical.

Self-guided online learning is doomed to fail. Research shows an exceptionally high drop-out rate – even in developed countries. Learners simply have no incentive to keep at their studies without peer pressure, a teacher at hand or a structured learning environment

The only answer, in the country’s unequal teaching environment, is a customised version of blended learning. Blended learning integrates computer-assisted online activities with traditional face-to-face teaching (chalk-and-talk).

When used by a trained teacher, this approach can add valuable new dimensions to the learning process. It can allow learners to work at their own pace and teachers to fill content gaps.

Blended learning in South Africa

In many developed countries, blended learning is a well-established practice. It has enabled these countries to adapt to the demands of the current pandemic. Digital remote learning and teaching is backed up by dependable infrastructure and skilled, motivated teachers.

By contrast, the differences between South African schools have been thrown into sharp relief. The binary system of a privileged minority of schools and the rest remains, despite the political changes more than 25 years ago.

More than 80% of public schools are under-resourced. They are ill-equipped to respond to the teaching and learning challenges of the 21st century – let alone the latest demands of the pandemic.

The current lockdown has suddenly compelled teachers to adopt predominantly online, blended learning teaching practices. But nearly 90% of all households in South Africa are still without access to the internet at home. Very few schools had adapted to blended learning before lockdown and few schools would be able to adopt it during the lockdown. Therefore the schools that had fewer resources and skills will fall even further behind.

This is especially disappointing since the current cohort of pupils (born after 2000) have long expressed their preference for a blended learning model. Even the recent recognition by the South African government that science, technology, engineering and mathematics are important in the Fourth Industrial Revolution has had little effect on the skills development of teachers, infrastructure or modernisation of resources in schools.

Therefore, in the South African context, mainstream blended learning is not the complete answer. We need to go beyond blended learning.

Customised blended learning model

Since 2002, the Govan Mbeki Mathematics Development Centre in Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth has wrestled with these challenges.

The bad news is that there’s no way to make the teaching and learning of maths and science easy. But we’ve developed a number of interventions that have lifted the twin burdens of poor training and lack of infrastructure from the shoulders of teachers. Skills development linked to the use of user-friendly and interactive digital resources has allowed teachers to focus on attaining a high quality of teaching with subsequent learning successes.

Over the past decade, the centre has experimented with various combinations of online and offline self-directed teaching methods. It has worked specifically on blended learning for mathematics and physical sciences in secondary schools.

The greatest success has been a blended learning system that uses a combination of online and offline interactive resources with pre-installed apps that are aligned with the South African school curriculum. These can be used as a guide for teaching, home-schooling, after-school study and tutoring. We call it techno-blended learning: a structured approach, using mostly offline apps in an integrated way, with the full participation of a trained or experienced adult mentor or guide.
One of the centre’s more recent interventions is a mini personal computer called the GammaTutor™. This’s an offline device pre-loaded with interactive learning material. These resources have been specifically designed for South African school conditions.

The GammaTutor™ software package is primarily intended for teachers: when plugged into any data projector, a TV or digital screen, it doubles as a flexible maths and science teaching assistant in the classroom and a learner support resource for after school hours. It fits in the palm of a hand, requires no data and is navigated by the click of a mouse. Its small size makes the device easy to keep safe and to take where it’s needed.

What needs to be done

It’s well known that major educational challenges exist in schools as a result of the country’s multi-language society – particularly in the teaching and learning of mathematics. The GammaTutor™ application offers mathematics concept explanations in eight indigenous languages.

The device covers the full curriculum for high school maths and physical sciences, presented in video, PDF or animated PowerPoint format – along with glossaries, exam revision support, translations from English into indigenous languages and many additional teaching support materials. It can be used for interactive teaching online and remotely.

The response from teachers, learners and stakeholders to this approach of teaching and learning has been overwhelmingly positive. Where these interventions have been applied, in pilot schools in the Eastern Cape province, the results have been gratifying. Marks have improved significantly and successful learners have been able to progress to university.

The new urgency for remote teaching caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has created an opportunity for the country to adopt policies to accelerate blending learning practices among teachers and learners. The Govan Mbeki Mathematics Development Centre offers lessons learned through more than a decade of research.

Werner Olivier, Professor in Mathematics and Director: Govan Mbeki Mathematics Development Centre, Nelson Mandela University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Hawaii is home to many of the world's rarest plants and animals, recognised globally as a 'biodiversity hotspot.' “We have seen a lot of positive actions being taken around the world, especially new green initiatives, in response to the pandemic,” Mrema of the Convention on Biological Diversity, said. Credit: Jon Letman/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, May 22 2020 (IPS)

This year’s International Day of Biological Diversity falls amid the coronavirus pandemic and the slow easing, in some nations, of a global lockdown. While the lockdown has forced most people to stay at home, there have been reports of more wildlife being spotted – even in once-busy city centres. 

This change is fitting for this year’s theme: “Our solutions are in nature.” Experts say that this is an opportunity for humans to see the footprint they are leaving behind on earth, and time to reflect on how to work towards a better future for the sustainability of the environment and for wildlife in the future. 

“We know that humanity stands at a crossroad with regard to the legacy we wish to leave to future generations,” Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Acting Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, told IPS. “As noted by the recent IPBES [Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services ] Global Assessment report, the current global response has been insufficient, given that nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history, and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world. Transformative change is necessary in order to restore and protect nature.”

‘Pandemic of complacency’

“I’m hoping what this pandemic does for us is draws attention to the pandemic of complacency that we were in before and [how that] contributed to the higher carbon [footprint], to greater human footprint, [and] plastic pollution in the ocean,” Roderic Mast, Co-Chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature SSC Marine Turtle Specialist Group, told IPS. “Hopefully it’ll make people realise they were having an impact.”

Mast added that one issue that has come up during this lockdown is a rise in illegal poaching in places such as Indonesia and French Guiana. Although this information is yet to be verified, Mast said he has unofficial accounts from community members on the ground that a lack of enforcers on the job means there more illegal poaching is taking place. 

Meanwhile, Mrema of the Convention on Biological Diversity said conservation efforts have actually strengthened under the pandemic.

“The present COVID-19 crisis has provided us with a reset button – as well as confirming what we already know, that biodiversity is fundamental to human health – and has given new urgency to the need to protect it,” Mrema said. 

However, both experts echoed each others’ sentiments that now is not the time to become complacent seeing the changes the lockdowns have brought to wildlife. For example, just because more sea-turtles are seen out in the open does not mean the crisis has been resolved, Mast said. 

“This temporary reduction of stress is not sufficient and we need greater changes in the way we treat our environment,” Mrema said.

“The only thing wrong with the ocean is all the stuff that we humans put in it and all the stuff we humans take out,” Mast added. “So if we can limit what we put in the ocean in terms of pollution, boat traffic, and sounds, and if we can limit what we take out in terms of fisheries — that’s when we’re going to start seeing healthier oceans.”

According to the IUCN’s Red List, 31,030 species of the 116,177 that have been assessed are threatened with extinction. Here are glimpses of conservation efforts and endangered species around the world:

Biological Diversity by Inter Press Service

Excerpt:

The Russian capital, Moscow. The country has one of the world’s worst HIV/AIDS epidemics with new infections rising at a rate of 10-15 percent per year and at least 1.2 million people infected. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, May 19 2020 (IPS)

In Russia, which has one of the world’s worst HIV/AIDS epidemics, an already fragile healthcare system is buckling under the pressure of dealing with COVID-19.

The country has the second-highest number of reported coronavirus infections (as of May 19), hundreds of hospitals have reported outbreaks and death rates among doctors and other frontline health workers have been far above that in other countries.

It also has one of the world’s worst HIV/AIDS epidemics with new infections rising at a rate of 10-15 percent per year and at least 1.2 million people infected.

According to a statement from Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), more than 100 of the country’s AIDS prevention and control centres have been “mobilised to support the country’s fight against COVID-19“.

While health officials assured that quality care for those with HIV continues, as resources are stretched to keep the COVID-19 in check, those working with people living with HIV (PLWHIV) say they have experienced problems.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, one source told IPS: “There are people trapped in one part of Russia but not registered as living there because of the lockdowns. This means they cannot get their medication.

“Then there are migrant workers who normally bring their meds with them, then go back home after a few months to get their refill. They cannot get them now. Or there is a single mother who cannot leave their kids at home to get their medicine. So, volunteers deliver them to these people’s doors.”

Sources told IPS that local community groups and volunteers have also resorted to making illicit arrangements with doctors to deliver ARVs to people who need them.

“This is not something that is openly talked about because the people involved in this should not be doing this, but doctors realise they have no other choice or people could die,” one source said.

Disruptions to treatment for PLWHIV can be fatal. If a person adheres to treatment, their HIV viral load drops to an undetectable level. But if ARV treatment is not regular, a person’s viral load rises, affecting their health and potentially eventually leading to death. Even minor interruptions can affect the health of PLWHIV.

Although the World Health Organisation has said there is no evidence that the risk of infection or complications of COVID-19 is any different among PLWHIV who are clinically and immunologically stable on antiretroviral treatment compared with the general population, it is thought that people who have compromised immune systems are at greater risk of suffering severe illness from COVID-19.

Lockdowns across the country have also made it difficult for people in at-risk groups, such as drug users and sex workers, among others, to access harm reduction services.

Some facilities which provided treatments for drug users have been repurposed to deal with COVID-19 and it has also been decreed that drug users can only get treatment for drug dependency if they are in an acute condition.

There are concerns that these limits on the availability of treatment for drug users could push them into more risky drug-taking behaviour and put them in more danger of contracting HIV.

Anya Sarang, President of the Moscow-based Andrey Rylkov Foundation (ARF), a grass-roots organisation with a mission to promote and develop humane drug policy, told IPS: “But what is defined as an acute condition? These [drug users] are among the most vulnerable people in society at the moment and they cannot get help.”

Job losses during the crisis have also had an impact, driving some into poverty.

Sex workers are among some of those who have suffered most financially during the pandemic.

“They are having a very hard time. Many have lost all their work, and then lost their homes, and are now struggling to even eat, let alone get HIV medicines,” a senior worker at one NGO working with PLWHIV told IPS.

Meanwhile, Enji Shagieva, secretary of the Russian Forum of Sex Workers (RFSW), wrote for the AFEW health rights organisation earlier this month outlining the risk that many face.

“Organisations working with sex workers have cancelled outreach visits to places where sex workers still continue their activities, at their own risk. HIV testing and the distribution of condoms have been stopped. Sex workers still need condoms…,” she said.

Amid these problems, though, networks of local organisations and activists are working to ensure vital services are still being provided for PLWHIV and at-risk groups.

Russian NGOs explained to IPS how they had adapted to lockdown restrictions to find ways to continue providing harm reduction services, including providing clean needles and syringes for drug users to lessen the risk of contracting HIV.

Sarang said: “We normally went out for three or four hours every night and set up a mobile point where people could come and get needles etc. but we had to stop that during lockdown.”

“But we have managed to carry on using existing community networks in our city for needles/ HIV test distribution, increasing digital outreach, and case management, for example taking people to pick up their medicine,” she added.

Shannon Hader, Deputy Executive Director, Programme, UNAIDS, told IPS: “COVID-19 raises more challenges for HIV treatment and service provision, but the issue is how countries and partners meet these challenges.”

Hader said HIV treatment and prevention delivery systems already in place in many developing nations could be altered to meet current challenges: “There are opportunities for innovation and flexibility in service models for HIV which mean that those services need not be interrupted. We can put services into the hands of the people that need them themselves.”

“I am optimistic that if there is the political will, then developing countries will be able to come up with solutions and that there will not be a competition [for healthcare resources] between HIV and COVID-19,” said Hader.

Meanwhile, ARF is also running support groups through social media and regularly collecting feedback from at-risk communities to talk to people and help them where possible.

“All we are doing is trying to help people that need it wherever we can,” Sarang said.

Excerpt:

Remittances now account for an important portion of GDP in Latin America and the Caribbean and support millions of families, so the drop in this source of income is shaking the economies of many countries and deepening poverty in the region. CREDIT: World Bank

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, May 18 2020 (IPS)

Remittances that support millions of households in Latin America and the Caribbean have plunged as family members lose jobs and income in their host countries, with entire families sliding back into poverty, as a result of the COVID-19 health crisis and global economic recession.

The region will receive a projected 77.5 billion dollars in remittances this year, 19.3 percent less than the 96 billion dollars it received in 2019, according to provisional forecasts by the World Bank.

The damage “can be understood from the angle of consumption. Six million households, of the 30 million that receive remittances, will not have them this year, and another eight million will lose at least one month of that income,” expert Manuel Orozco told IPS from Washington, D.C.

Remittances in the region average 212 dollars per month, according to studies by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Remittances “represent 50 percent of the total income of the households that receive money from family members abroad, and increase their savings capacity to more than double that of the average population,” said Orozco, who heads the migration, remittances and development programme at the Inter-American Dialogue organisation.

“The projected fall, which would be the sharpest decline in recent history, is largely due to a fall in the wages and employment of migrant workers, who tend to be more vulnerable to loss of employment and wages during an economic crisis in a host country,” the World Bank stated in a report.

The cause of this was the shutdown of entire segments of economic activity in an attempt to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus, which deprived migrants of their sources of employment and income, thus undermining their ability to send money back home to their families.

This is a global phenomenon, with remittances falling by at least 19.7 percent to 445 billion dollars in low- and middle-income countries as a whole: dropping by 23 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, 22 percent in South Asia, 19.6 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, and 13 percent in East Asia and the Pacific.

Remittances “are a vital source of income for developing countries,” World Bank Group President David Malpass said Apr. 22, noting their role in alleviating poverty, improving nutrition, increasing spending on education and reducing child labour in disadvantaged households.

Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), listed the drop in remittances among the factors that will depress the region’s economy to an unprecedented level, -5.3 percent, with the risk of poverty climbing from 186 million to 214 million inhabitants: 33 percent of the total population.

An empty money transfer office in Las Vegas, Nevada, which is usually packed with migrants sending remittances home from the U.S. to their families in Central America. The city, dedicated to leisure and tourism, has been paralysed by the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving thousands of migrant workers without employment or income. CREDIT: Western Union

Anxiety from the north

The countries that will be hardest hit are those of Central America and Haiti, according to Bárcena. Remittances make up between 30 and 39 percent of Haiti’s gross domestic product (GDP), and last year accounted for 21.8 percent of Honduras’ GDP, 21.2 percent of El Salvador’s and 13.8 percent of Guatemala’s.

“We’re talking about fragile states, with collapsed health systems, weak or corrupt governments, and budgets that were already insufficient to meet people’s needs and are worse off now,” Victoria Gass of the U.S. division of Oxfam’s anti-poverty coalition told IPS from New York.

Orozco stressed that it will affect the consumption capacity of 20 percent of Central Americans, who will be forced to use their savings, on average a quarter of all remittances, for immediate expenses such as buying food and medicine.

In El Salvador, for example, Gabriela Pleitez, 35, who lives in the capital, no longer receives the 200 dollars a month sent to her by her mother, a dental assistant, and her brother, a taxi driver, who live in Los Angeles, California and found themselves suddenly unemployed.

Gabriela completed the 400 dollars she needed to get by with unsteady work as a real estate agent or by selling clothes and beauty products. Now she takes in some money as an assistant at a stand that sells traditional foods.

“I don’t buy bread anymore, and I’m eating less. If you manage to get 10 dollars you have to think carefully what to spend it on. If I don’t pay the water bill, they will cut it off. My landlord won’t charge me rent for three months, in accordance with a government decree, but then he will want me to leave,” she told IPS.

Another Salvadoran, Rosa Ramírez, a 56-year-old mother and grandmother still in charge of an adult daughter and four children, said the pandemic dealt her small flower arrangement business a death blow. “The situation was difficult before, and now, with homes and businesses closed, I’m out of work,” the resident of Zacatecoluca, in the central department of La Paz, told IPS.

Young Latin Americans migrate in search of opportunities and older family members are dependent on their support through remittances to cover essential expenses such as food and medicine. CREDIT: IFAD

Her lifeline is her son Luis, 27, who found a job in 2018 as a carpenter in Stafford, Virginia, in the U.S. southeast, after fleeing from gangs who demanded he make payments to keep them from attacking his then three-year-old daughter.

Luis used to send her between 350 and 400 dollars a month “to pay bills, the rent, and medicine, because I’ve had high blood pressure for years and I can’t go without my medicine,” Rosa said. But now her son has only sent her half that because “he is working fewer hours, one day he gets a job and the next he doesn’t.”

Rosa’s daughter received a temporary 300 dollar aid package provided by the government for the most vulnerable, and was able to cover basic expenses. But Rosa is now anxious about how she will make ends meet. Her daughter, Gabriela, would like to emigrate to the United States, but she has been told that the legal process could take eight years.

Another hard-hit country is Mexico, where 42 percent of the population of 130 million lives in poverty. In 2019, 36 billion dollars in remittances came in, mostly from the 37 million people of Mexican origin living in the United States.

Seven million households received remittances in 2019, but this year 1.7 million of those households will not receive them, Orozco calculated, due to the wave of unemployment that is hitting the U.S.

Intra-regional migration in the South

South America has a more even spread of migration that provides it with remittances, between North America, Spain and other European countries, and the sub-region itself, greatly increased by the millions of Venezuelans who fled to neighbouring countries in the last six years due to the economic, political and humanitarian calamity in their country.

This is the case, for example, of 26-year-old Laura (who preferred not to give her last name), who works in a veterinary clinic in Lima, “which has practically been left without clients due to the lockdown ordered by the Peruvian government. My husband, who used to do various jobs, is not bringing in an income either,” she told IPS from the Peruvian capital.

Poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean will rise with the fall in economic activity, the largest seen in the region in almost a century, and this time there will be little relief from remittances because the COVID-19 pandemic has also sunk the economies of host countries. CREDIT: UNDP

Laura regularly sent 100 dollars a month to her mother, a widow raising two teenage children on the meager salary (equivalent to five dollars a month) of a school teacher in Barquisimeto, a city in central-western Venezuela.

With each remittance, her mother “could buy some medicine, some meat, milk and eggs to complete the CLAP (the acronym for the bag of basic foodstuffs that the government delivers monthly at subsidised prices to poor families), but now I can’t send her almost anything, we’re just trying to scrape by in Lima,” said Laura.

Of the Venezuelans working in Peru, 46 percent were street vendors, 15 percent were employed in shops and six percent worked in restaurants – activities that have all faced restrictions in the COVID-19 pandemic, according to research by Cécile Blouin of the Pontifical Catholic University in Lima.

In the last five years, 1.6 million Venezuelans have migrated to Colombia, 880,000 to Peru, 385,000 to Ecuador, 370,000 to Chile, 250,000 to Brazil and 145,000 to Argentina, according to a platform of United Nations agencies and NGOs monitoring the phenomenon.

The Venezuelan diaspora was added to more traditional migration flows, such as that of Paraguayans in Argentina: 550,000 migrants who sent home some 70 million dollars in 2019, a figure that was already declining due to exchange controls in Buenos Aires.

One third of the 1.3 billion dollars that Bolivia received in remittances in 2019 came from Bolivian migrants in Argentina, Brazil and Chile, but the figure has dropped since March with the measures put in place in the attempt to contain the spread of COVID-19.

In Peru, which has three million citizens living abroad, a quarter of the 3.3 billion dollars the country received in remittances in 2019 came from the 350,000 Peruvians living in Argentina and the 250,000 in Chile.

Until this global upheaval, remittances were counter-cyclical: workers sent more money to their families when their home countries were experiencing crisis and hardship, which this time they have not been able to do because the pandemic and recession have affected all countries.

But there is some hope for the future. According to the International Monetary Fund, after falling -3.0 percent in 2020, the world economy will grow 5.8 percent in 2021 (Latin America 3.4 percent) and remittances will also increase at a similar rate. In low- and middle-income countries they will total 470 billion dollars.

But for millions of Latin American families, like those of Gabriela and Rosa in El Salvador or Laura in Venezuela, that’s too long a wait.

With reporting from Edgardo Ayala in San Salvador.

It’s an indisputable fact: the United States leads the world in the number of Covid-19 deaths. As of 15 May, three months after the country’s first confirmed coronavirus death, the US death toll from the pandemic has reached a remarkable 88,000 deaths. That rising figure is more than double the number of coronavirus deaths of the next highest country, the United Kingdom at 34,000 deaths.

The pandemic is still in its early stages and many fear the worst is yet to come. Today’s coronavirus mortality picture will no doubt change over time, continuing to evolve and remaining a long-term threat, as the coronavirus spreads death and suffering to populations across the planet.

Among the world’s ten most populous countries, representing 58 per cent of the world’s population, a strong correlation exists between population size and the total number of annual deaths from all causes.

China and India, for example, represent 18 percent of the world’s population and about 18 percent of the world’s total number of annual deaths. Similarly, the United States population is 4 percent of the world’s population and has about 5 percent of the world’s annual number of deaths

However, the distribution of deaths from the coronavirus pandemic differs greatly from the distribution of the world’s total annual deaths. Whereas the US accounts for 5 percent of the world’s number of annual deaths, the country now has 29 percent of the world’s total Covid-19 deaths. In contrast, China, which accounts for 18 percent of the world’s total number of annual deaths, now has about 2 percent of the world’s total Covid-19 deaths (Figure 1).

Source: United Nations Population Division for population size and annual numbers of deaths; Worldometer for Covid-19 deaths as of 15 May 2020.

If Covid-19 deaths were distributed proportionate to a country’s share of world total annual deaths, a very different picture would emerge. The United States death toll from the pandemic would plummet to a fraction of its current level, from 88,000 to 15,000 and China’s coronavirus deaths would be many times larger than its current level, from 4,600 to 55,000.

If the coronavirus had first emerged in New York City rather than Wuhan, then perhaps one might expect the United States to have experienced a disproportionate share of all pandemic deaths. However, the virus first appeared in China and that country has a comparatively low number of Covid-19 deaths.

So what then is the likely explanation for why America leads the world in Covid-19 deaths?

The high numbers of American Covid-19 deaths appear basically to be the result of Washington’s peculiar response to the pandemic. That response differs markedly from those of countries that have achieved relatively low numbers and rates of coronavirus deaths

Some observers have chosen to dismiss this question at the outset by discrediting and denying the statistics relating to the pandemic. Those data, they maintain, are unreliable and should be ignored.

Cause of death data, they contend, are flawed with deaths, especially of the elderly, coming from other causes that are often attributed to Covid-19 and at other times Covid-19 deaths are mistakenly attributed to other deaths or missed entirely. Also, they believe that political considerations are greatly influencing the reported numbers of Covid-19 deaths.

Most observers recognize the statistical shortcomings of pandemic mortality data and believe that the reported numbers are likely to be undercounts of coronavirus deaths. However, they do not find the statistical limitations sufficiently compelling to explain away why the United States leads the world in coronavirus deaths.

The high numbers of American Covid-19 deaths appear basically to be the result of Washington’s peculiar response to the pandemic. That response differs markedly from those of countries that have achieved relatively low numbers and rates of coronavirus deaths.

At the start of the year, the Washington response began by dismissing early warnings, denials of likely trends and eschewing expert advice regarding the expected staggering consequences of a pandemic. It was followed by assurances by the American president that every thing was under control, the country was in far better shape than other countries, claims minimizing the impact of the coronavirus, including it is not as perilous as seasonal flu, predictions of an early resolution and a vaccine by the year’s end.

This initial phase of the White House response was later followed by the politicization of the pandemic and its reported consequences. Health, medical and mortality concerns and recommendations to address the pandemic became highly divisive partisan issues.

The pandemic turned to a political battle of “us vs. them”. Some declared that the pandemic was being used as a new hoax to bludgeon the president.

Angry protests, some armed military-style, and threats of violence erupted across the country against recommended pandemic mitigation guidelines, including shutdowns, shelter-in-place, quarantines, testing, social distancing and face masking. This was further complicated by rising distrust and growing resentment that were worsened by conflicting messages coming out of Washington and many state capitals.

When the global pandemic was declared on 11 March 2020, the number of American deaths was relatively small, slightly below 40. However, the number of Covid-19 deaths grew rapidly, reaching 4,000 by 30 March, 40,000 by 19 April and 80,000 by 9 May (Figure 2).

Source: Estimates from Worldometer and projections by author.

Further complicating matters, the 88,000 coronavirus deaths have been unevenly distributed across the American population. Covid-19 has disproportionately hit the poor, low-income workers, minority communities and elderly men.

Many have called for dramatic and speedy changes in the government’s strategies, programs, health infrastructure, finances, testing, contact tracing, case isolation and surveillance to confront the continuing spread of the coronavirus. In their view, the government’s policies and programs to confront the pandemic, which is considered far from contained, have been plagued by incompetence, callousness, duplicity, disorganization and unpreparedness.

Others consider the calls for changes in strategies and programs as unjustified attacks aimed at undermining the current Administration for purposes of political gain, especially with the presidential election on the horizon. Media and other inquiries questioning the merits of Washington’s response to the pandemic and challenging the president’s claims of achievements and successes are often viewed as nasty and reflections of personal contempt for the country’s head of state.

While America leads the world with Covid-19 deaths, it does not lead the world in the Covid-19 death rate. To date, approximately eight European countries have higher rates than the United States. For example, the coronavirus death rate of Italy and Spain is double the rate of the United States.

However, many countries have achieved Covid-19 fatality rates that are a fraction of America’s rate. In Germany and Japan, for example, the Covid-19 death rates per million population are 96 and 6, respectively, versus 268 in the United States. Other countries with low coronavirus death rates include: Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Israel, Hungary, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Poland, Singapore and South Korea.

The total number of coronavirus deaths in the United States will soon hit 100,000, eventually exceeding 200,000 and is projected to reach more than 3,000 deaths each day by early June 2020. The American president has said that those numbers of death indicate that the government’s response to the pandemic has been successful and he’s done a good job.

As stated at the outset: America leads the world in Covid-19 deaths. Before continuing to advance unfounded, self-congratulatory claims, especially well before the pandemic’s spread is contained, the government in Washington may wish to review and consider adopting, as appropriate, some of the policies and programs of countries that have been considerably more successful than the United States in reducing the pandemic’s deadly toll.

In doing so, the Administration should rely more heavily on scientific advice and knowledge-based guidance from medical and public health experts as a foundation for the government’s overall pandemic policies. That reliance would greatly contribute to developing a vital strategy needed to avoid a feared calamitous resurgence of coronavirus deaths, suffering and grief in the coming months that would also in turn set back efforts for social and economic recovery.

Joseph Chamie is an independent consulting demographer and a former director of the United Nations Population Division.

By External Source
JOHANNESBURG, May 15 2020 (IPS)

One of the planet’s – and Africa’s – deepest prejudices is being demolished by the way countries handle COVID-19. 

For as long as any of us remember, everyone “knew” that “First World” countries – in effect, Western Europe and North America – were much better at providing their citizens with a good life than the poor and incapable states of the “Third World”. “First World” has become shorthand for competence, sophistication and the highest political and economic standards.

So deep-rooted is this that even critics of the “First World” usually accept it. They might argue that it became that way by exploiting the rest of the world or that it is not morally or culturally superior. But they never question that it knows how to offer (some) people a better material life. Africans and others in the “Third World” often aspire to become like the “First World” – and to live in it, because that means living better.

For Anglophone Africans, it is doubly interesting that two of the greatest failures in handling COVID-19 are the former coloniser, Britain, and the English-speaking superpower, the United States of America

So we should have expected the state-of-the-art health systems of the “First World”, spurred on by their aware and empowered citizens, to handle COVID-19 with relative ease, leaving the rest of the planet to endure the horror of buckling health systems and mass graves.

We have seen precisely the opposite.

Fatal errors

“First World” is often code for countries run by Europeans or people of European descent; some of the worst health performers on the globe in recent weeks have been “First World”. For Anglophone Africans, it is doubly interesting that two of the greatest failures in handling COVID-19 are the former coloniser, Britain, and the English-speaking superpower, the United States of America.

Both countries’ national governments have made just about every possible mistake in tackling COVID-19.

They ignored the threat. When they were forced to act, they sent mixed signals to citizens which encouraged many to act in ways which spread the infection. Neither did anything like the testing needed to control the virus. Both failed to equip their hospitals and health workers with the equipment they needed, triggering many avoidable deaths.

The failure was political. The US is the only rich country with no national health system. An attempt by former president Barack Obama to extend affordable care was watered down by right-wing resistance, then further gutted by the current president and his party. Britain’s much-loved National Health Service has been weakened by spending cuts. Both governments failed to fight the virus in time because they had other priorities.

And yet, in Britain, the government’s popularity ratings are sky high and it is expected to win the next election comfortably. The US president is behind in the polls but the contest is close enough to make his re-election a real possibility. Can there be anything more typically “Third World” than citizens supporting a government whose actions cost thousands of lives?

Western European countries such as Spain, Italy and Africa’s other wholesale coloniser, France, also battled to contain the virus. Some European countries have coped reasonably well, as have some run by the descendants of Europeans such as New Zealand and Australia. But the star performers are not in the historical “First World”.

Effective responses

The most effective response was probably South Korea’s, followed by other East Asian states and territories. This is partly because they are used to dealing with coronavirus outbreaks. But it is also because they learned from experience: South Korea’s success is due to very effective testing and tracing of infected people. Whatever the reason, it is East Asia, not “the West”, which has done what the “First World” is expected to do.

Some would reply that East Asia is now “First World”. So, it is still superior; it has simply changed its address. This is debatable. But, even if it is accepted, some places have contained the virus in distinctly “Third World” conditions.

Kerala was the first Indian state to encounter the virus but has kept deaths down to three. It had largely curbed COVID-19 but is now dealing with nearly 200 cases, all people arriving from other parts of India. Judging by its record so far, it will contain this outbreak too.

Kerala, too, has learnt from handling previous epidemics. It also has a strong health system. But one of its key tools is citizen participation: it has worked with neighbourhood watches and citizen volunteers to track the contacts of infected people. Students were recruited to build kiosks at which citizens were tested. Kerala also had the capacity to ensure that all children entitled to school meals received them after schools were closed: non-governmental organisations were mostly responsible, emphasising the partnership between the government and citizens.

Kerala’s performance is not a fluke: it has, for years, produced better health outcomes and literacy rates than the rest of India.

Nor has Africa’s response to the virus confirmed prejudices. When COVID-19 began spreading, it became almost routine for reports, commentaries – and Melinda Gates, who, with her husband Bill, heads the couple’s development foundation – to predict that Africa would be engulfed in death as the virus ripped through its weak health systems. This is, after all, what is meant to happen in the “Third World” and particularly in Africa, which is always considered the least capable continent on the planet.

So far, it has not happened. It still might but, even if it does, some countries are coping better than the dire predictions claimed (and, perhaps, better than the “First World”). One stand-out is Senegal, which has devised a cheap test for the virus and has used 3-D printing to produce ventilators at a fraction of the going price. Africa, too, has experienced recent outbreaks, notably of Ebola, and seems to have learned valuable lessons from them.

Inspiring

The “First World” is still far richer than the rest of the planet and may well remain so. So its politicians, academics and journalists will probably still believe they are better than the rest.

But the COVID-19 experience may just trigger new thinking in the “Third World”. The most basic function of a government is to protect the safety of its citizens. Ensuring that people remain healthy is at least as important a guarantee of safety as protecting them from violence.

Reasonable people would surely much rather be living in Kerala or Senegal (or East Asia) right now than in Europe and North America, raising obvious questions about who really does offer a better life.

That should inspire Africans and others in the “Third World” to ask themselves whether it makes sense to want to be America, Britain or France. COVID-19 has made a strong argument for wanting to be East Asia – or, given Africa’s circumstances, Kerala.

Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of Johannesburg

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Mohammed Hussein Bahr Aluloom, Permanent Representative of Iraq to the United Nations, addresses the open video conference with Security Council members in connection with the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI). Courtesy: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, May 13 2020 (IPS)

Iraq’s newly-announced leader has brought hope to a country embroiled in a 17-year-long conflict, but authorities must ensure that issues such as swift and rapid response to COVID-19, security concerns, and corruption among others are addressed with urgency, experts said on Tuesday. 

The government of Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhim, which was announced last week, is “a long- overdue but very welcome development,” Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, said at a briefing on May 12.

Hennis-Plasschaert lauded the new government’s agenda to address a wide range of issues and added, “Iraq does not have the luxury of time, nor can it afford destructive petty politics.” 

Al-Kadhim has said a key priority for his government is to address the current coronavirus pandemic and investigate cases of those who killed protesters in the last few months, Al Jazeera reported on Thursday. 

While experts acknowledge that addressing the coronavirus is an urgent issue, with almost 3,000 cases and 112 deaths in the country, there remain concerns that other long-standing issues might be of higher priority. 

“While the pandemic remains a serious issue, most Iraqi citizens are more concerned by the possibility of not being able to meet basic livelihood needs, in particular in light of the collapse of oil revenue,” Hassan Mneimneh, a scholar at the Middle East Institute (MEI), told IPS after the briefing. “The spread of COVID-19 has so far not been devastating, which complicates the effort of sensitising the general public to its seriousness.”  

At the briefing, in welcoming al-Kadhim’s government, Hennis-Plasschaert further reiterated that containing the spread of the virus should be the top-most priority, especially since the Iraqi health system was “already near breaking point before the coronavirus outbreak”. 

But realistically, this might not be as easy as it has been for other countries. As Mneimneh said, “A sustained total lockdown is not practical or enforceable, [and] contact tracing is virtually impossible, but some forms of social distancing and mandating masks in public may be possible.”

He added that an information campaign could be extremely crucial in order to contain the spread in the country.

Meanwhile, Hennis-Plasschaert reiterated the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres’ plea for a ceasefire in late March in light of the coronavirus pandemic. But with the Islamic State’s activities, Mneimneh said the issue is more nuanced than a straightforward answer. 

“Note that the Islamic State terrorist group will certainly not abide by any such call, and therefore a sustained fight against it is necessary,” said Mneimneh, whose work has a special focus on radicalism and factionalism. 

A massive highlight in the new government, however, is the glimmer of hope for minority communities and women. At the briefing, Hennis-Plasschaert said minority communities and women must have a representation in the government, which Mneimneh said is likely given al-Kadhimi’s reported record of “deliberate and pro-active attention” to both demographics. 

“This is the moment of reckoning after 17 years of mismanagement and neglect,” Mneimneh said of the new government, highlighting the importance of the people of Iraq in driving through the new force of change, a sentiment also echoed by Hennis-Plasschaert.

“[Al-Kadhimi] assumes his responsibilities while Iraq undergoes its most acute existential crisis — with an empty treasury, grim outlook for revenue, and a potentially devastating public health crisis,” Mneimneh said. “The efforts of all Iraqis and friends of Iraq are essential to avoid the fall into the abyss.”

Excerpt:

Africa is grappling with managing diseases like malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis as health systems that are unable to cope with both this and the coronavirus pandemic. Sleeping under a net and taking antimalarial pills helps prevent malaria. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, May 11 2020 (IPS)

Experts across Africa are warning that as hospitals and health facilities focus on COVID-19, less attention is being given to the management of other deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which affect millions more people.

“Today if you have malaria symptoms you are in big trouble because they are quite close to COVID-19 symptoms, will you go to the hospital when it is said we should not go there?” Yap Boum II, the regional representative for Epicenter Africa, the research arm of Doctors Without Borders, told IPS.

“Hospitals are struggling because they do not have the good facilities and equipment; it will be hard to take in a patient with malaria because people are scared. As a result the management of malaria is affected by COVID-19,” Boum, who is also a Professor of Microbiology at Mbarara University of Sciences and Technology in Uganda, said, pointing out that HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis were also being ignored.

In fact, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that four times as many people could die from malaria than coronavirus.

“With COVID-19 spreading, we are worried about its impacts on health systems in Africa and that this may impact negatively on the delivery of routine services, which include malaria control. The bans on movement will affect the health workers getting to health facilities and their safety from exposure,” Akpaka Kalu, team leader of the Tropical and Vector-borne Disease Programme at the WHO Regional Office for Africa, told IPS.

The WHO has urged member countries not to forget malaria prevention programmes as they race to contain the COVID-19 spread. Without maintaining prevention programmes, i.e. should all insecticide-treated net campaigns be suspended and if access to effective antimalarial medicines is reduced because of lockdowns, malaria deaths could double to 769,000 in sub-Saharan Africa this year.  At the same time the agency has predicted that some 190,000 people could die of COVID-19.

According to the WHO, as of today, May 11, Africa has recorded over 63,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 2,283 deaths in 53 affected countries in the region.

• Though preventable and treatable, Africa is battling to eliminate malaria despite a decline in cases over the last four years.
• The continent has the highest malaria burden in the world, accounting for 93 percent of all cases of the disease.
• Malaria is one of the top ten leading causes of death in Africa, killing more 400 000 people annually.

Poorly equipped and understaffed national health services in many countries in Africa could compromise efforts to eliminate the malaria scourge, noted Kalu.

Africa must cope with COVID-19 without forgetting malaria

Mamadou Coulibaly, head of the Malaria Research and Training Center at the University of Bamako, Mali, concurred that the pandemic was straining health systems in developing countries. He urged malaria-endemic countries not to disrupt prevention and treatment programmes.

“To avoid this catastrophic scenario, countries must tailor their interventions to this challenging time, guaranteeing prompt diagnostic testing, treatment, access and use of insecticide-treated nets,” Coulibaly, who is also the principal investigator of Target Malaria in Mali, told IPS. 

Mali is one of the top 10 African countries with the high incidence of malaria.

Malaria needs more national money

Kalu stressed that domestic financing for malaria was needed. He commended the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and other private sector partnerships that have provided funds for malaria. But he pointed out that this was neither ideal nor sustainable unless national governments contributed a lion’s share to malaria control.

• There is a $2 billion annual funding gap when it comes to malaria prevention, which should be closed to sufficiently protect people in malaria affected countries, according to the RBM Partnership to End Malaria, a global private sector initiative established in 1998. The partnership has sourced funding and equipment for malaria prone countries, providing mosquito nets, rapid diagnostic tests and antimalarials.

More action, less talk

While pleased with progress made towards eliminating malaria in Africa since 2008 when the Abuja Declaration on Health investment was signed, Kalu said Africa could do better.

• In 2001 African governments drew up the Abuja Declaration to invest 15 percent of the national budgets in improving health care services.

• Nearly 20 years later, a handful of countries such as Swaziland, Lesotho, Ethiopia, Liberia and Burundi have invested in building their health systems, according to 2016 WHO assessment report on public health financing for health in Africa. Many African countries have reduced their spending in health as a percentage of total public expenditure than they did in the early 2000s.

• For every $100 that goes into an African nation’s state coffers, on average $16 was allocated to health. Of this amount  only $10 was spent, with less than $4 going to the right health services.

“For the first time in our lifetime, the human being and the world is realising that the most important thing we have is our health,” said Boum, questioning why African governments have all not prioritised health spending despite the Abuja Declaration.

“With our borders closed we are all being taken care of in the poor health system that we have built,” Boum, told IPS. “There is no more flying to India, London or the United States. We are all in the same boat because we have not invested what we were supposed to invest and I hope beyond the pandemic, we will make health care a just cause and even manage to go beyond the 15 percent health investment agreed upon.”

With the current level of investment in health systems, the WHO fears Africa will not achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG3 on ensuring healthy lives and wellbeing for all and ending malaria by 2030.

“We do not want a situation where we are protecting people from COVID-19 and they die of malaria and other diseases,” Kalu told IPS.

“We are not asking governments to put money in malaria alone but in national health systems. COVID-19 is showing that Africa needs facilities and equipment which it does not currently have to effectively deal with the pandemic.”

Marcia Julio Vilanculos, pictured here in this dated photo with her baby, was one of the participants of a digital literacy training course at Ideario innovation hub, Maputo, Mozambique a few years ago. Only 6.8 percent of all Mozambican women, with or without owning a cellphone, use the internet. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, May 8 2020 (IPS)

The digital divide has become more pronounced than ever amid the global coronavirus lockdown, but experts are concerned that in the current circumstances this divide, where over 46 percent of the world’s population remain without technology or internet access, could grow wider — particularly among women.  

“There were already deep divides in access to technologies including the internet and medical technologies, before COVID-19 began to spread,” Astra Bonini, Senior Sustainable Development Officer at the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), told IPS. “The digital divide has been closing, but over 46 percent of people are still without access and among women, the rate is lower with over half of all women offline.” 

Exposing an already existing problem

The glaring lack of access to technology and the internet is only building on pre-existing inequalities between communities on matters of income, wealth, access to healthcare, electricity and clean water, living and working conditions, access to social protection and quality education, Bonini pointed out. 

How people are able to cope with the crisis depends heavily on the community they belong to, and where they stand with regards to the factors stated above. In essence, it begs the question: given social distancing is a key measure to contain the virus, and online access is the main way to stay connected, which communities have the tools to survive this pandemic? 

“With the need for high capacity healthcare systems and a nearly overnight transition to internet-based services, including remote learning and telemedicine, inequalities in access to technologies will leave people out and inhibit the options they have for getting healthcare and medical treatment, as well as for accessing distance learning and online information about reducing exposure to COVID-19,” Bonini told IPS. 

And the divide is not just being exposed when it comes to educational access. Other issues such as access to medical technologies, including ventilators and protective equipment are also “very unequal across geographies,” Bonini said.

Bonini was one of the speakers at the “Strengthening Science and Technology and Addressing Inequalities” webinar organised by UN DESA on Wednesday, May 6. Also featured were Maria Francesca Spatolisano, Shantanu Mukherjee, Deniz Susar, Marta Roig of UN DESA, as well as Fabrizio Hochschild-Drummond, the Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on the Preparations for the Commemoration of the U.N.’s 75th Anniversary. 

The topic of discussion was how science and technology can be implemented to address the current pandemic.  

In an interview with IPS, Susar, governance and public administration officer at UN DESA, pointed out that an estimate 3.6 billion of the world’s 7.8 billion people remain offline today, with the majority of them in underdeveloped countries. 

“Connecting them to the internet is not an easy job; it is not also a task only for governments, but the private sector,” he told IPS. “Cooperation is needed.” 

Only 30 percent of low-income countries are able to provide digital training access for their students, which is a testament to the experts Bonini pointed out. 

A recent launch of the “Learning Passport” initiative brought this issue further to light. While it was launched to make classrooms accessible for students stuck at home, the platform’s creators were not able to outline how to provide access to this facility for those without digital access. 

Bonini stressed the importance of expanding household internet coverage for families and students to have access to online classes and/or online learning opportunities, as well as for them to have access to health-related information. 

“There is an urgency to expand affordable internet access and to invest in STEM education to improve digital equity efforts,” Susar added. “There are many different initiatives around the world. More needs to be done.”

Collaboration between different actors of society

Both Susar and Bonini reiterated the importance of the private sector as well as for different actors in society to come together for a solution to address this gap.

“In general, policy makers can ensure everyone can have access by removing barriers,” Susar told IPS. “This can be tax incentives and or other subsidies. The private sector can do its part in the same way by providing affordable access and various options for different income groups.”

He added that partnerships between public and private entities can be effective in ensuring this, while academia and civil society can play a crucial role “in capacity building especially for vulnerable groups in acquiring digital skills”.

Bonini agreed and highlighted the importance of actions from all sectors as well. “Governments can lead the response, but the private-sector, civil society and individuals all have to be on board to make policies work,” she said.

While these relationships are being established and conversations are starting, Bonini suggested a more timely way to address this gap could be through outreach using radio, television or other means that are more likely already available in low-income households. 

“We need to understand people’s needs, we need to find the resources needed to achieve these needs,” said Susar. “The COVID-19 pandemic forced governments to work together with other stakeholders to provide access. We can only hope that these partnerships can continue in the post-COVID19 world.”

An Indigenous woman worker harvesting the tender leaves in a tea farm in Unakoti district of Tripura State before the coronavirus lockdown. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
UNAKOTI, India, May 4 2020 (IPS)

As the sun sets over the hills, Prafulla Debbarma, a small tea grower in Dhanbilash village in north eastern India, walks along the labyrinth path of his farm and past a thick blanket of well-grown tea plants. In the fading light, the farmer appears deeply worried. This tea farm, the sole source of his livelihood, remains unharvested thanks to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

Across the region, tea harvesting begins on Apr. 1. But as India declared a total lockdown to halt the spread of coronavirus on Mar. 25, farmers in Tripura — the fifth-largest tea producer in India — also had to halt all activities, which included not being allowed to bring in additional labour for harvesting. Two weeks later, on Apr. 12, the government finally allowed harvesting, but by then the tea bushes had grown bigger with new leaves losing their tenderness — a crucial factor in determining the quality of the tea.

According to Debbarma, who is head of the state’s Association of Small Tea Growers — a 4,700-strong community of independent, smallholder tea farmers or growers — everything was fine until the pandemic.

“Our tea was starting to get recognised and markets were just opening for us slowly. The government also was promoting this sector. But the lockdown has destroyed everything because from harvesting to sale, there will be a chain of losses now,” he told IPS.

The supply chain includes plucking the tender tea shoots in spring, drying, processing, packaging and selling, which is done through auctions. Small tea growers, few of whom own a processing facility, sell their entire produce to bigger tea farms in the region.

So being at bottom of the supply chain pyramid, Debbarma explained, means that small growers are also the most vulnerable as they have little say in the sale of the produce or price control.

The Rangrung tea estate, in Unakoti, in India’s Tripura state, is owned collectively by a group of small tea farmers. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Small tea growers making headway 

A few kilometres away from Debbarma’s farm is Rangrung, a tea estate owned collectively by a group of small tea farmers. Many of these farmers also work as day labourers on other plantations as their own farms are too small to provide a livelihood.

Dulal Urang, one of Rangrung’s smallholder farmers who also works as a day labourer, is worried that the economic effects of the COVID crisis may push sector back to an era of uncertainty similar to the one almost two decades ago.

• From 1982-2001, the state’s entire tea sector collapsed due to a raging armed insurgency. As violence escalated, most estates were forced to shut down.

However, over the past few years, the tea sector had begun thriving again.

• Debbarma and Urang are among the 4,000 small tea growers, defined by  the Tea Board of India as a person who has a tea farm of up to 25 acres, in Tripura. Here in Tripura, most smallholder tea farmers like Debbarma cultivate on less than two acres of land.
• There are now 58 tea estates, spread over 7,482 hectares of land, with an annual production of around 8.72 million kg. Of these, 13 farms are like Rangrung, owned by small tea growers’ collectives.
• Together, the industry employs over 13,000 people.

Livelihood worries

According to the United Nations, tea plays a meaningful role in rural development, poverty reduction and food security in developing countries.

But in India, tea estates have been historically known as pockets of poor nutrition, ill health and under nourishment, mostly because of low wages and poverty. In Tripura, an overwhelming majority of the workers here earn between $26 to $66 per month, a Tripura University study found. It noted, “the present wage rate is Rs.71 ($0.94) per day, it may be increased up to Rs.150 ($1.98) per day or more”.

The set government wage in Tripura is actually 176 rupees or $2.33 a day for an adult and 88 rupees or $1.66 a day for a non-adult. A UNICEF-backed study also notes that a significant number of tea estates across the country also employ child labour.

However, farms that have better market access and higher selling prices had been slowly changing for the better.

Debbarma, who started his own processing unit recently, employs some 29 people and sells most of his produce to Hindustan Lever — Unilever’s India arm.

“The price was good, and the procurement process is transparent. If we produce more, we can pay more to [our workers] and change our entire community,” said the farmer.

Kanchan Uriya a member of the Rangrung village council noted that where estates paid the government daily wage, life had been better for tea pickers.

“Wherever the right wages are paid, the living condition has improved. You can see in tea estates like Manu Valley where workers have regular food supplies, mobile phones etc. But some [tea estates] are still not paying it,” she told IPS.

Small tea growers producing quality organic tea

But some of the smallholder tea farmers, who also worked as day labourers, had been contributing by producing high quality organic tea, said Bijit Basumatary, head of the Organic Small Tea Growers Association of North East (OSTGANE).

In international markets, the difference between the price of organic and non-organic tea is huge: while a kg of the best quality of non-organic tea sells for about $5, organic tea can be sold for at least at $105 per kg.

Though to sell organic tea, a tea planter needs to acquire a certificate from an authorised agency and recommendation of the Tea Board of India (TBI) — the nodal government agency on tea trade. It’s a complex process, involving a variety of tests on the variety, quality and yield rates, among others.

With limited resources and without the backing of big business houses, small tea growers found it hard to get the organic tag. 

Yet, two smallholder tea farms in Tripura, Maheshkhola and Mohanpur, had received the coveted organic certification after they met the National Programme for Organic Production Standards.  

And other like Debbarma had been lobbying the government for support in getting the certification, while proactively learning organic farming techniques. 

Debbarma, who is also the vice chair of OSTGANE, organised one such training at his own tea farm prior to the coronavirus lockdown.

Combating the effects of climate change

The growers were also planning a shift to natural gas from coal — a move supported by India’s premier fossil fuel explorer Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC), Om Prakash Singh, a senior ONGC official had said during a press conference in January. 

If implement quickly, this could be a small but significant step towards easing the burden of the troubled industry, which has been hit by climate change. 

• Data from the Tea Research Institute — India’s oldest and largest tea research station — shows that India’s entire tea industry is facing climatic challenges such as erratic rainfall, which is causing inconsistent and low yield.

Combined with organic farming, the shift to an alternative, clean energy supply would help the small tea growers in Tripura restore plant and soil health, increase yield and better combat the climate threat in the future.

Dulal Urang cycles through Rangrung tea garden. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Coronavirus may have reversed the progress

But amid the COVID-19 lockdown, this continued improvement of conditions seems impossible now, Uriya said. Especially as most tea farms follow a ‘no work, no pay’ policy.

The lockdown, which was meant to end today, May 4, has been extended for a further two weeks.

According to Debbarma, the combination of a delayed harvest, coupled with a low market price is almost certain to cause financial damage and losses too heavy to recover.

Uriya is afraid that this will result is much lower wages for tea pickers. 

“If they didn’t pay the right wages when business was good, how will they pay when there is little or no business?” she said.

In the meantime, small tea farmers, like Urang, want to ensure their harvests are wasted and that they can continue earning a living.

“Right now, I am only hoping that my harvest is sold and there will be enough work after this season. Otherwise, our survival will be difficult, especially when the rains come,” Urang told IPS.

Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By External Source
Apr 26 2020 (IPS)

Following the outbreak and declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic, there has been a flurry of scientific research and publications to address challenges posed by the virus. Publications have risen exponentially over the past few months as scientists work tirelessly to find out more about the pandemic, and the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing it.

Knowledge is a product of a social collaboration and should thus be owned by and placed in service of the community. But is it? Are researchers doing enough to translate and simplify the important messages so that this knowledge could be clearly communicated to citizens and policy makers?

We would argue not.

There are salutary lessons from the recent past. In 2007, for example, an extensive review citing 434 original research articles and other relevant scientific publications warned that:

The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb. The possibility of the reemergence of SARS and other novel viruses from animals or laboratories and therefore the need for preparedness should not be ignored.

Why were the scientists’ warning not heeded? What more should have been done to communicate the insights?

The example underscores why the rapid sharing of research is so vital. In cases like the COVID-19 pandemic, it can save lives. As commentators have noted, a robust and scientific system – and an informed citizenry – require immediate and public access to research. As the scientific response to COVID-19 demonstrates, there are benefits to opening the scientific system.

A rethink is necessary

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an opportunity for countries to understand how members of the public are accessing and engaging with scientific information.

A Swedish non-profit organisation, Vetenskap & Allmänhet, recently conducted a study on how people in Sweden are interpreting information about COVID-19.

It showed that nine out of ten Swedes indicated that they had fairly to very high confidence in the information supplied by doctors and other health care professionals. A similar number of people (87%) showed confidence in researchers. They also reported a significantly lower confidence in the information from politicians and journalists.

This picture is likely to look very different depending on the level of trust in scientific information and institutions in a particular country.

There are interventions that can shift the dial on distrust. But it requires a national effort and a rethink of the roles of various actors within the national research landscape when it comes to communication and engagement with research.

In South Africa the Department of Science and Innovation has established a strategy for engaging the South African public. This includes inviting greater citizen participation in the institutions of science. It also involves greater interactions between the state, universities and other research performing entities, business and industry, and civil society.

A recently approved law amendment has contributed to the rethink around the relationship between science and society. The act gives the National Research Foundation (NRF) – a science grant funding foundation – the mandate to support national development by, among other responsibilities, “supporting and promoting public awareness of, and engagement with, science”.

COVID-19 has shown some of these crucial elements coming together.

Encouraging signs

The current pandemic has seen the South African government and scientists, researchers and clinicians working jointly to engage the public with robust scientific evidence guiding key decisions around national health and safety.

The most visible sign of this has been the role played by one of the country’s internationally renowned epidemiologists, Professor Salim Abdool Karim. Appointed to chair the Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID-19, he has engaged the public in a nationally televised presentation. He also held a webinar.

In both of these ‘science and health conversations with the nation’ Karim shared deep thinking on complex science issues, and excellent scholarship in an accessible way.

These interactions have shown that South Africa has come some way to using the products of science in its daily life (for example, asking questions, collecting and analysing evidence, and evaluating possible results); and engaging in debate on science-related matters of public interest.

Access

But the first hurdle is to ensure that scientific papers are more readily available. This cause has been championed by the Open Science movement which has gained considerable traction over the past 15 years. Open Science aims to make the primary outputs of publicly funded research results – at a minimum publications and the research data – publicly accessible in digital format, with no or minimal restriction.

The campaign advocates the participation of citizens in the scientific process, the sharing of knowledge through social networks and the development of educational resources that serve to enrich the discourse between science and society.

One key initiative has been Open Access 2020. This is a global alliance committed to accelerating the transformation of the subscription publishing system to new open access publishing models. The aim is that these ensure transparent costing of the article processing charges as well as the immediate and free availability of the information and knowledge.

South Africa’s NRF has embraced the philosophy of Open Science with specific emphasis on Open Access. NRF analysis done on articles published by South African universities between 2009 and 2018 shows that 36% were published in open access formats. This is slightly above the global average of 28%.

Open Science has the potential to reduce the amount of time that research findings take to make their way into the public domain where they can be read, drafted and translated into strategies, policies and laws. The COVID-19 pandemic shows how vital this is.

Building trust

Ultimately, trust needs to be built between the general public and scientists. This needs to be done by strengthening the interface between science and society and increasing public understanding of the process and impact of science.

And high quality and innovative public engagement needs to be built as an integral part of research. Like many of our colleagues worldwide it is our hope that science engagement will be enhanced as part of the broader debate about public value. This, in turn, will stimulate continued conversations about science, publics, democracy and governance.

Michael Ellis, Science Communication Manager at NRF South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement, co-authored this article.

The authors also acknowledge the inputs of NRF colleagues Dr Molapo Qhobela, Dr Makobetsa Khati and Ms Faranah Osman.

Dorsamy (Gansen) Pillay, Deputy Chief Executive Officer (DCEO) responsible for leading the Research and Innovation Support and Advancement, National Research Foundation and Beverley Damonse, Group Executive: Science Engagement and Corporate Relations, National Research Foundation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.